Mac no longer recognizing internal camera, microphone

March 11, 2023 9:19 PM

My 2019 MacBook Pro stopped recognizing that I have an internal webcam and microphone soon after I connected an external keyboard through the USB-C port. How do I fix this?

I have a 2019 MacBook Pro (13 inch screen, Four Thunderbolt 3 ports, 2.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5), running macOS Big Sur Version 11.7.3

MacBooks of this era had a "butterfly" keyboard that breaks apart. So I just got an external keyboard to connect via USB-C. That's what I'm typing on right now. It seems to work fine. I had to tweak System Preferences a bit with its Keyboard tab.

I'm afraid it might be a side-effect of the USB keyboard, because it happened soon after, but now I can't seem to video chat, or use Photobooth, or use any application that connects to the webcam or microphone (internal). They say there's no webcam or microphone connected (I can get bars to show when I speak into System Preferences). I've check that my applications have privacy permission set to allow connection to the webcam. I've tried rebooting, re-installing Chrome. When I take out the keyboard, the webcam doesn't return to normal use.

Any ideas?

posted by Schmucko to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Not sure about the specific situation but the go-to first step for a scenario like this is to create a new user account, log in as that, and see if the problem is still happening. If so it is fairly likely to be a hardware issue.
posted by sesquipedalia at 9:32 PM on March 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

Have you tried a non-chrome app for testing video? Photo Booth is my go-to for video tests. It comes with MacOS (at least I have it with Ventura. I don't think it's new though)
posted by aubilenon at 10:44 PM on March 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

Resetting the SMC might help.
posted by kickingtheground at 12:38 AM on March 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

Seeing bars on System preferences makes it unlikely to be (purely) a hardware issue, so definitely try a new user acct.

Another thing that can't hurt and might help is resetting the NVRAM.
posted by SaltySalticid at 3:21 AM on March 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

these are all good suggestions so far, but just to note: I had a 2019 13" MacBook Pro (the lower-end model) and had this problem, and the issue was the camera module in the screen had gone bad. It went off to AppleCare, and I got a new screen assembly. (You have a slightly different machine but it's got the same screen assembly.) In my case, the camera didn't show up in System Profiler/System Information - it should under either Camera or USB; can't remember which on that version of macOS. Fortunately, it was still under original warranty. My troubleshooting went as far as to wipe the machine and start from scratch with a fresh macOS install after doing most of the troubleshooting steps that have already been described here. (This is definitely a bit much but I was pretty sure it was a hardware failure by the time I got that far and I wasn't gonna send the thing in without wiping it first anyway.)

One thing that might stick out if you get Apple Support or someone else to look at it is that you've got a rather old version of macOS on it - Ventura is the latest. It's a free update if you want to try that. I very highly doubt that upgrading will fix it - my (admittedly very limited) experience says that the camera module is probably bad - but it's worth a shot, noting the usual caveats that come with upgrading your OS.
posted by mrg at 12:28 PM on March 12, 2023

Response by poster: I ended up buying a new external webcam, which works.
posted by Schmucko at 6:37 PM on April 15, 2023