disable iSight camera

[bschonhorst]

FYI- I edited so hopefully it won’t just show up as a new thread…

We purchased some new intel macs which come with a built in iSight camera. Currently there are at least 3 programs installed by default that directly make use of the camera – PhotoBooth, iMovie, and Quicktime Player. We do not want kids using the cameras but we will need to be able to use iMovie and Quicktime.

I had heard that you could just remove the kernel extension to the camera (/System/Library/Extensions/Apple_iSight.kext) to disable it and after a reboot this seems to have no effect.

sudo rm /System/Library/Extensions/Apple_iSight.kext

I thought maybe the extension was just being cached so I tried touching the Extensions folder which supposedly causes the cache files to be recreated at boot:

sudo touch /System/Library/Extensions

and a reboot but no luck.

Tried a bigger hammer and just removed the cache files:

sudo rm /System/Library/Extensions.kextcache
sudo rm /System/Library/Extensions.mkext
sudo rm /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kernelcaches/*

No luck this time either….my face keeps appearing in Quicktime.

Anyone have any other solutions? I would prefer a software solution, rather than duct tape or super glue 🙂

[bschonhorst]

Someone else suggested removing the following Quicktime component:

/System/Library/QuickTime/QuickTimeUSBVDCDigitizer.component

This worked for us on our new iMacs. The camera is not available in Quicktime or iMovie now. I just removed PhotoBooth from our laptop image.

Apparently the other file, /System/Library/Extensions/Apple_iSight.kext, is the driver for external isight cameras.

[Blacklion]

I thought maybe the extension was just being cached so I tried touching the Extensions folder which supposedly causes the cache files to be recreated at boot:

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