The Best Setapp Apps for Video Calls and Remote Work

Setapp is an odd thing to shop for. You are not choosing an app, you are choosing a shelf, and the only question that matters is how many jobs on your own week the shelf actually covers. If most of your week is video calls, here are six apps that each own one moment of a call day, with what each one is good at and the thing each one is not.

Disclosure. CamLoop is on Setapp, and the Setapp links on this page are partner links: if you join through one, Setapp pays us a share of your membership for as long as you stay a member. One of the six apps below is ours. The other five are here because they do something we cannot, and every entry names what the app is bad at as well as what it is good at.

Before you join: Hand Mirror

The three seconds before you join are when you find out about the laundry behind your head, and the meeting window is the worst place to find out. Hand Mirror puts your camera feed one click away in the menu bar. It opens as a popover, or as a Smart Window you can drag around, resize and keep on top of everything else, and the Smart Mask tool lets you change that window's shape and size. On a Mac with a notch, Notch Trigger lets you click behind the notch to open it.

What it is not. A single-purpose utility, and Photo Booth shows you the same picture for nothing. What you are paying for is that it opens in one click and gets out of the way, which is the whole difference between checking and not bothering.

Getting there on time: In Your Face

In Your Face replaces the banner you swipe away with a full-screen alert, by default one minute before the event starts. It reads your calendar, recognises more than 30 video-conference services and gives you a one-tap join, so the hunt through the invite for the link disappears. You can choose which calendars trigger alerts, set the snooze length, pick the sound, and it has a smart filter that shifts the alert when an event includes travel time.

What it is not. It works through Apple Calendar, so Google and Outlook calendars have to be added in System Settings before it sees them. And a full-screen alert is a full-screen alert: if one fires while you are sharing your screen, the room sees it too. Which is the cue for the next app.

A clean screen to share: One Switch

One Switch is a menu-bar drop-down of the system toggles macOS keeps in a dozen different places. Two of them matter here: Hide Desktop Icons, so the folder called final_v3_REALLY stays private, and Do Not Disturb, so the alert above never lands in front of your audience. Keep Awake, Dark Mode, Night Shift, Screen Saver, AirPods Connect and Screen Clean are in the same menu, and each toggle can take a hotkey.

What it is not. Nothing in it is new. Every one of these settings already exists somewhere in macOS. You are paying for them being in one place with shortcuts, which on a day with six screen shares is worth more than it sounds, and on a day with none is worth nothing at all.

Pointing at things: Presentify

Describing which button you mean is slower than circling it. Presentify lets you draw straight onto whatever is on screen, from the menu bar, in a choice of colours, shapes and gradients, and it can highlight the area around your cursor with the colour, opacity and size you set. A control panel switches tools, every action has undo and redo, and you can record your own shortcuts so you are not pointing at the menu bar while you present.

What it is not. The annotations live on the screen, not in a file. They are for the moment you are talking through, and nothing survives the call. If you want the marked-up version afterwards, that is a different job.

Keeping what was on the screen: CleanShot X

That different job is CleanShot X. It captures the screen without your desktop icons in the shot, takes scrolling screenshots of a page taller than the window, records video and GIFs, trims the recording afterwards, and annotates, highlights or hides parts of the image. One click uploads a capture to CleanShot Cloud and hands you a shareable link, which is quicker than attaching a file to a message. The Setapp build is CleanShot X with Cloud Pro, which comes with 10 GB of that storage.

What it is not. It is the largest app on this list and it wants to own your screenshot shortcuts. If Cmd+Shift+4 has never let you down, this is more tool than the job needs.

Stepping away for a minute: CamLoop

This one is ours, so take the praise with the appropriate pinch of salt and weigh the limitation below instead. A day of back-to-back calls still has doorbells, kettles and a child who needs something now, and turning your camera off to deal with them is a louder interruption than the errand is. CamLoop records a few seconds of you listening and loops it through a virtual camera, so one hotkey swaps your live feed for the loop and the same hotkey brings you back. Your microphone passes through untouched, so you can keep answering, and the clips never leave your Mac.

What it is not. It is for the thirty-second errand, not for the hour, and we would rather say that than have you find out. It also changes what the call sees and nothing else: presence in Teams and Slack runs on activity, not on your webcam. For the full set of ways to take a break on a call, including the ones that are not us, there is the step-away playbook, and the virtual camera round-up compares CamLoop with OBS, ManyCam and the rest.

Is a membership worth it for a call-heavy week?

One membership covers all six, so the arithmetic is simple: it pays when more than one or two of these jobs are yours every week. If exactly one is, buy that app on its own, because most of them are sold directly too. The table is the short version.

Worth saying plainly: none of these makes you better at calls. They remove six small frictions from a day that has a lot of them, and six small frictions is roughly the point at which a membership stops being a subscription you forgot about. If that sounds like your week, you can start a Setapp membership here. If it does not, the list above still works as a shopping list.

FAQ

Is CamLoop included in a Setapp membership? Yes. CamLoop Pro is included in a Setapp membership at no extra cost. It is a separate install from the direct download, so a direct Pro licence does not unlock the Setapp edition and the other way around.

Do I need Setapp to use these apps? No. Hand Mirror, In Your Face, One Switch, Presentify and CleanShot X are all sold on their own as well, and CamLoop has a free tier and a direct licence. A membership is worth it when several of these jobs are yours every week, not when one is.

Which one should I install first if I only want one? If you present often, Presentify or CleanShot X. If you keep arriving late to calls, In Your Face. If your day is back to back and you never get to stand up, CamLoop.

Does running a camera loop keep me showing as available? No. Presence in Slack and Teams is computed from keyboard, mouse and app activity, not from your webcam. A loop changes what the call sees, nothing else.

New to the loop part? The two-minute setup guide installs CamLoop and approves the camera extension, and there are per-app guides for Zoom, Google Meet, Teams and Slack huddles once it is running.