Photobooth unable to use camera

I force quit all open apps, although you can't force quit Finder. I found PhotoBooth worked straight away after the force quit procedure, and still worked after rebooting. One further finding, I have an app by McPaw, CleanMyMac X Version 4.7.4 which I run about once a week to clean out junk etc. I have found that after I run it PhotoBooth stops working again. However, using the force quit method PhotoBooth is restored. I will report this to McPaw for their information. Thanks again to IrishCanadian for discovering this recovery method for this problem which had frustrated me for weeks!.

WOW! so easy! This has been bugging me for so long! and all you need to do is to go to applications, find Photo Booth, Make a copy, open the copy, and now both the original app and the copy works and will turn on the camera! - afterwards you just throw away the copy and you are good. What an annoying bug to let sit in the system!

I have a simple fix for this issue which has plagued me for 3 weeks on both BigSur 11.1 and 11.2.

Switch off FaceTime in your FaceTime preferences. It worked for me.

Good Luck!

I had the same problem before, It would just show a black screen for me but the camera light would be on.

To solve it, I first made sure my Mac was updated to the latest version, I then made a copy of the app in the application folder, then I launched the original and the copy and both were working. Then I got rid of the copy and everything was working fine :)

I hope this method helps you..

I thought I had resolved this issue yesterday by switching off FaceTime and I posted a comment in Apple Discussions to that affect. I now stand corrected because the same issue occurred again later.

However, I persisted and this morning I got PhotoBooth working again by simply Force Quitting all applications and Finder. I then opened PhotoBooty again and it started working. I don't know why it did because I am not a techie, but I hope my simple solution works for you and others.

BTW, I am telling as many people as I can not to upgrade to BigSur or buy a new Mac until Apple has found solutions to BigSur issues, including for me 2nd Display and slow restart after shutting down. Oh yes, upgrading from 11.1 to 11.2 had made no difference for me.

I don't have a suggestion other than a restart or possibly a SMC reset. Works fine on my iMac Pro and M1 MacBook Air.

How to reset the SMC of your Mac - Apple Support

Try selecting Photo Booth, then command+c to make a copy of the app, followed by command+v to paste the copy into the app folder. Then… launch the copy.

Did you FORCE QUIT all caps, including Finder? How about then rebooting?

Agree with the frustration- such a basic program, totally non-functional in latest version of BigSurly...

neither internal or external Logitech cam shows up in Photo Booth' whereas it always worked before.

Hint, from one other source- if you select "Apps" in SysPref / Security & Privacy / select "Camera"

Photo Booth doesn't even show up in the list. No way to add? What's the deal Apple fixers?

I'm glad to report that IrishCanadian's force quit solution has cured my problem. As I reported earlier, when I ran my McPaw, CleanMyMac X Version 4.7.4 app, Photo Booth stopped working again but was restored using IrishCanadian's force quit method. I reported this to McPaw and they provided a solution which involved excluding the User Cache files from the Smart Scan routine and adding Photo Booth to the Ignore List. Since following McPaw's solution Photo Booth has continued to work reliably after running the CleanMyMac app and after numerous reboots of my MacBook Pro. I hope this additional information may be of use to anyone else experiencing the same problem. Best regards and thanks again to IrishCanadian - stay safe!

Since my earlier post I did a restart and now find PB is working normally. I have done numerous restarts and the app seems to be stable.

yes, this is the dambdest- tried the CreativeSmith 'OPT-CMD drag,' made the app-copy, and now BOTH the copy and the original work. Yo, Apple - pay attention. Thanks also to iggipop for verifying the fix.

I really don't know, but seems this is a permissions issue.

FWIW, even when rebooting with CMD+R, running CSRUTIL DISABLE in terminal, then rebooting back to my user account (admin), am unable to modify PB's behavior.

I surrender.

It was your suggestion, reported above, which gave us the OPT + CMD drag fix; several including me found it worked. In my case both the app-copy and the original have worked since then, but keeping the copy in case. Apple says they are “passing it up the chain” for whatever that means. Thanks for sharing the info.