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Level 1

8 points

Camera not detected MacBook Pro

Hey guys,

My MacBook doesn't recognise the built in camera and I have already tried typing "sudo killall VDCAssistant" in the terminal. It comes up with "no matching processes were found" after I type in my password.

I tried to fully erase everything after buying the laptop second hand and accidentally turned off the computer a bit early. I had to then restart and upload the software which came up with Mountain Lion and I then updated it back to the newest software.

Apparently the camera worked before that all happened so maybe I did something with it then?

Any idea what could have gone wrong and how to fix it?

MacBook Pro 13", macOS 10.15

Posted on Apr 6, 2020 6:44 PM

Best reply

John Galt

Level 10

141,320 points

Posted on Apr 6, 2020 7:34 PM

There have been a number of substantially identical reports following the most recent macOS update, and an even greater number of alleged fixes. Most of them strike me as voodoo (such as what you tried) and none of them have resulted in a permanent fix.

You are welcome to try examining System Information > Hardware, but I am nearly certain it's going to indicate no FaceTime camera is installed. If that's the case no amount of process-killing will solve it.

Rather than waste time chasing alleged fixes (some of which you surely heard about) the only suggestion that makes any sense to me is to reinstall macOS from Recovery: Reinstall macOS - Apple Support. Unfortunately no one has yet followed up with a report of either success or failure. It's harmless enough to try though.

I have reason to believe it's a bug in that recent macOS update. If that's the case we will just have to wait for Apple to fix it.

Short of that you can restore a Time Machine backup of a system that predates that macOS update, but considering it was released over a week ago you may need to restore a lot of work created subsequent to that time.

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Camera not detected MacBook Pro

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