Questions

OverlayCam is a macOS app that composites your logo, a frame in your colours and a lower third with your name onto your webcam picture, optionally blurring the room behind you, and then publishes the result as a real macOS camera.

Because the result is a camera device rather than a plugin, any application that can pick a camera can pick OverlayCam — the video app does not need to know OverlayCam exists.

Any macOS application that lets you choose a camera, including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Slack, FaceTime, Webex, Discord, OBS and QuickTime. OverlayCam appears in the camera list beside your built-in or USB webcam.

There is no per-app plugin and nothing to reconfigure when a call moves from one platform to another.

Four layers: a logo in any of the four corners, with width, margin and opacity; a frame as a solid border, a gradient or a single bottom bar, with thickness, corner radius and opacity; a lower third with your name, a second line and an optional company, in seven styles; and background blur at two strengths.

OverlayCam can also replace the picture entirely with a “be right back” card while you step away.

Each is optional and each is set independently. OverlayCam does not add effects, filters, scenes or recording — it puts your brand on the picture and stops there.

A virtual background lives inside one application, so the work is gone when the next meeting is on a different platform. OverlayCam registers a camera with macOS, so the same branded picture reaches every application on the Mac.

Studio apps such as Boom or Camo do much more — recording, screen layouts, phone-as-camera — and price accordingly. OverlayCam does branding only. There is a full comparison at overlaycam.app/compare.

macOS 14 Sonoma or later, on either Apple silicon or an Intel Mac — OverlayCam ships as a universal binary. It is signed and notarized by Apple.

No account, no subscription and no internet connection are required to use it.

Download the disk image from overlaycam.app/download (currently version 1.5.0), drag OverlayCam to Applications, and open it. On first launch OverlayCam asks macOS to register its camera extension, which you approve once in System Settings under Privacy & Security. Some Macs need a restart before the camera appears.

Then open your video app, choose OverlayCam in its camera list, and leave the OverlayCam app running for the duration of the call. OverlayCam can start its camera by itself whenever you open it, which is a setting and is on by default, so in practice opening the app is the whole routine.

Publishing a camera that every other application can see is a system-level job on macOS, so OverlayCam ships a camera extension and macOS asks you to approve it, in the same way it would a driver. You approve it once.

The approval is what makes OverlayCam work everywhere instead of inside one app, and it can be withdrawn at any time by removing the app.

Check three things, in this order: that the OverlayCam app is open, because the camera exists only while it is running; that the camera extension was approved in System Settings under Privacy & Security; and that your video app was restarted after the approval, because most video apps read the camera list once at launch.

If the extension approval did not complete, restarting the Mac and opening OverlayCam again resolves most cases. If it still does not appear, write to overlaycam@elepea.co with your macOS version and the video app you are using.

Move OverlayCam from Applications to the Trash, which removes the camera extension with it, and delete ~/Library/Application Support/OverlayCam if you also want to remove your saved presets.

Nothing is left behind elsewhere on the Mac and nothing has to be cancelled, because OverlayCam has no account.

Yes. A preset in OverlayCam saves the whole look under a name — the logo and its corner, the frame and its colours, the name and title, the blur — not just a colour. Presets sit in a list in the app and switching between them changes the camera immediately.

The logo image is stored inside the preset rather than as a link to a file, so moving or deleting the original image does not break it.

No. Many video apps mirror your self-view, which is why text on your own screen can look reversed to you. OverlayCam never mirrors the lower third in the picture it publishes, so your name and title read correctly to everyone else on the call.

OverlayCam offers two strengths: light, to settle a busy room, and strong, when you would rather not show the room at all. Your Mac separates you from the background using Apple’s on-device Vision framework and softens only what is behind you.

The work happens on your machine, frame by frame, and each result is discarded with its frame. Nothing is uploaded to do it and no external service is involved.

Yes. Switching on “Be right back” in OverlayCam replaces the video with a card in your own colours, carrying a message you can type or change while it is up — the default reads “Back in a moment…”. The card can show the preset’s logo and frame, so it still reads as your brand.

While the card is up your camera is genuinely off: OverlayCam stops the capture and the green camera light goes out, so this is not a still image held over a running lens. The other people on the call keep receiving a valid picture throughout, because OverlayCam is still publishing the camera — it is simply publishing the card.

Every preset carries its own card, so the one you use for client calls can say something different from the one you use internally.

Yes. OverlayCam is an ordinary macOS camera, so recorders and streaming tools that let you choose a camera — QuickTime, OBS, Loom and similar — can use it exactly as a video call would.

English and Spanish. OverlayCam follows whichever language your Mac is set to, with no setting to change: a Mac in Spanish gets a Spanish app.

The overlay itself draws whatever you type, in any language and any script your Mac can render.

No. OverlayCam is a macOS application and depends on macOS camera extensions, so there is no Windows or Linux version and none is currently planned.

No. OverlayCam reads frames from your webcam, draws your overlay on top of them and publishes the result as a camera, all on your Mac, in memory. It does not record, save, buffer to disk or transmit your video or audio, and elepea has no technical means of seeing the contents of your calls.

None by default. OverlayCam creates no account, never asks who you are, assigns no advertising identifier and contains no analytics, crash reporting or advertising SDK.

Two things do touch the network, and both are yours to control. OverlayCam checks once a day for a newer version, a request that carries nothing identifying and that you can switch off in Settings. And if you tick “Help make setup less painful”, off unless you turn it on, OverlayCam reports how far the installation got, with a random per-installation identifier that is deleted when you switch the setting back off.

The full detail is at overlaycam.app/privacy.

In a file on your own Mac, at ~/Library/Application Support/OverlayCam/presets.json. The app and its camera extension share it through a private app group so the extension can draw what you configured.

That file is never uploaded. It may be included in your own Time Machine or iCloud backups if you have configured those, which is under your control.

OverlayCam is free while it is in early release. There is no trial, no account and no payment step, and every feature described here is included.

OverlayCam checks once a day for a newer version and tells you when there is one; nothing is downloaded or installed unless you choose it in the dialogue that appears. You can also download the current version at any time from overlaycam.app/download, and every release is listed at overlaycam.app/changelog.

Write to overlaycam@elepea.co. It reaches the person who builds OverlayCam, and a bug report is most useful with your macOS version, the OverlayCam version, and which video app you were using.

Feature requests are read and are what decides what gets built next.

OverlayCam is made by elepea, a company organised under the laws of the Republic of Colombia. The terms are at overlaycam.app/terms and the privacy policy at overlaycam.app/privacy.