How to Use Your iPhone as a Webcam

How to Use Your iPhone as a Webcam

Did you know that Apple has enabled the iPhone to work as a webcam? But that’s not all. You can now use it in a new view Apple calls Desk View, which allows you to share your desk surface.

What could I use this for?

If you are training or teaching anyone on any streaming services that requires showing you go through a process, this might help provide more context. For example:

• Teaching an online course and working through math problems
• Illustrating or painting
• Note taking and sharing with the group
• UI/UX design—wire framing

Setting up your devices

Here are the initial set up steps for your operating systems:

**after iOS 16 and MacOS Ventura are out of beta, all of these steps will probably not be needed and just skip to searching for “Desk View”.

• Sign in or sign up—You’ll want to go to Apple’s Beta Software Program and sign up, if you haven’t already, or sign in (This should be the same email account you use for your Apple account.)
• Next, you’ll want to select ‘enroll your mac’
• Back up your computer—You’ll be prompted to back up your computer or you can choose to move ahead
• Enroll your mac—this will download the Mac OS Public Beta Profile .dmg file
• Update OS—Once it’s downloaded, click on the Apple icon > System Preferences > and you should see the available Ventura OS update
• Repeat these steps on your iPhone—While your computer is updating, go to your iPhone and go to Apple’s Beta Software Program and click the iPhone tab

Opening Desk View

Simply do a search, either go to the search icon or press command + spacebar and search for desk view. After you launched it once, you can drag and drop it to the left side of your dock to make it easier to get to.

Other things needed

• A Magsafe iPhone case
• A Magsafe Popsocket

or

• A phone stand
• A small tripod

Other useful tools

• Hand Mirror app—desktop tool for checking if your camera is working (and if you have anything on you before a call!)
• Krisp app—very handy tool for audio setup for video calls

Gotchas

You might discover that this app quits working if you’ve updated one device and not the other. So if you ever run into that issue, go to your device settings and ensure that you are up-to-date with the latest beta releases.