iSight Command-Line Disabler

Enable and disable a Mac's built-in iSight camera via the command line.

Demo

Installation

A simple install script is included in this repository. This script will overwrite any file located at /usr/local/bin/isight.

\curl -sSL https://raw.github.com/jessedoyle/isight-cli/master/installer.sh | bash

Alternatively, take the isight script from this repository and put it wherever you like!

Usage

You must run the isight commands below with sudo privileges.

MacOS >= 10.11 (with System Integrity Protection)

An alternate strategy is used to disable the camera when isight-cli detects that the host system has System Integrity Protection enabled. In this case, system profiles are installed to disable the camera.

Disable:

sudo isight off

Enable:

sudo isight on

Running the isight command without any arguments will display the camera's current status.

View a simple help page using:

isight help

Caveats

The script simply restricts system access to the files that are required by the iSight drivers. Anyone with root access can re-enable the camera.

If the Disk Utility repair permissions tool is ran when the camera is disabled, the process will re-enable the camera.

Contributing

Feel free to fork this repository, make your changes and generate a pull request!

Acknowledgements

This script is based off of the work completed by http://techslaves.org on their great AppleScript "iSight Disabler".

Please visit: http://techslaves.org/isight-disabler/ to see the original AppleScript implementation.

License

iSight CLI Disabler is licensed under the MIT license. Please see LICENSE for details.