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The green light on my laptop's camera just flashed on and then off after 1 second. I am extremely concerned about this since I am not running any programs which could have enabled the camera.

I checked Console.app and found only this:

AppleCamIn::power_on_hardware

In Sharing settings, I only had File Sharing enabled for my Public folder, which is empty (I've since disabled the setting).

Is there a way to see which process requested camera access? I am worried my laptop has been compromised. I'm running Apple Yosemite, the latest stable version.

Kevin Burke
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    I address this by being so ugly that people immediately shut off the camera after they see what's on it, personally. – childofsoong Jul 31 '15 at 05:14
  • [Micro Snitch](https://www.obdev.at/products/microsnitch/index.html) just for that (built by a company behind Little Snitch). – moriesta Apr 10 '17 at 17:14

1 Answers1

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Both Debian and BSD you can use lsof command.

In your articular case, you can run:

lsof | grep -i "AppleCamera"

Documentation of lsof related to your OS.

  • Works also for OS X – Matthias M Jan 14 '18 at 15:59
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    Am on BigSur and this brings up nothing yet camera light is on – cyberwombat Nov 21 '20 at 19:29
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    My setup is I have mmhmmCamera app which Telegram uses. So telegram kept the camera light on after a call but "AppleCamera" does not show in lsof. "Cemera" did but only because mmHmm uses that in their app name. So this method is not reliable on macOS - at least not on BigSur. – cyberwombat Nov 21 '20 at 19:39