Why we built CamLoop

It was the fourth call of the day and my eyes were begging me to close them. Just for a second. But I was on camera, in a grid of faces, and I knew exactly what happens if you look away too long. Someone notices. The little "you good?" lands in the chat. So I sat there, present, blinking at a tiny green light, wishing I could just rest my face for thirty seconds.

That is the moment CamLoop came from. Not a grand product vision. A tired afternoon and a dumb little wish.

The black tile problem

Here is the thing nobody says out loud about back-to-back video calls. There is no graceful way to step away.

You can turn your camera off, sure. But on a call where everyone else is on, going dark makes you the odd one out. The black tile with your initials in it. It changes the energy of the room. It invites questions you do not want to answer in front of eight people. "Everything okay over there?"

So most of us just power through. We stay on, we stay still, and we slowly cook in front of the lens. The coffee goes cold. The door goes unanswered. The eyes keep straining. And the worst part is that none of it is necessary. You are not skipping the meeting. You just need to get up for a second.

The existing fixes did not fix it. You can wire up OBS and loop a video file, but that is a whole afternoon of setup, the loop looks robotic, and there is no quick way to flip it on and off mid-call. It is a power tool for a problem that should take one button.

What I built

CamLoop is a tiny macOS app that lives in your menu bar. You record a few seconds of yourself looking present and at ease. That clip becomes a virtual camera, the kind you select once in your camera picker. It works in Zoom, Meet, Slack, Teams, FaceTime, OBS, basically anything on your Mac that lets you choose a camera.

Then, when you need a breather, one hotkey swaps your live feed for the loop. Tap it again and you are back. That is the whole idea. Step away, come back, no announcement required.

A few details I cared about a lot:

Your mic stays on the entire time. CamLoop never touches your audio. So when you loop yourself and walk to the kitchen, you are still in the conversation. Hear your name, you can answer. You did not leave the room, you just rested your face for a minute.

The loop is built to look like you, not like a frozen app. Plays forward and back so there is no hard seam, and on Pro there is a "simulated lag" mode that adds the occasional freeze and catch-up jump, the way a slightly flaky connection looks. When you do come back, it waits for a clean, well-lit frame so nobody catches a dark cut.

It is genuinely light. A small menu-bar app, Universal for Apple Silicon and Intel, notarized by Apple, macOS 14 and up.

Your video stays yours

This part is not a feature, it is a principle. Your clips live in a local folder on your Mac and are never uploaded. Anywhere. CamLoop does not record your audio and does not route it through anything. Diagnostics are anonymous and opt-out, so if you want to send nothing, you send nothing.

I built it this way because it is the only way I would trust an app like this myself. Your face is yours. It should not leave your machine just so you can take a coffee break.

Free, with a little more if you want it

CamLoop is free to use. You get one clip up to ten seconds and a basic step-away from the menu, which is plenty to see if it fits your day.

Pro is $4.99 a month (less than the coffee you are stepping away to get). It unlocks global hotkeys, unlimited clips and lengths, the simulated-lag cover, the AI morph and alignment studio for seamless loops, plus import, export, and pinning. There is a 7-day Pro trial and it does not ask for a card. It is also coming to Setapp soon.

One last thing

I made CamLoop because I was tired of choosing between being present and being human. You should be able to rest your eyes, answer the door, or refill your water without it becoming a whole thing in the meeting.

If any of this sounds like your week, give it a try. Download it at camloop.app and take your next break without leaving the call.