Backdrop 0.3.0

What's new: Lenses

Filters, face effects and games that sit on top of your picture, in the app and in Backdrop Camera, so everyone on your call sees them. Pick one from the Lenses row in the menu bar, or the Lenses pane in the Studio, which has a live preview and keeps your high scores.

• Filters (10): Aura, Rainbow Aura, Ghost Trails, Comic Book, Pixel Art, Glitch, Matrix Rain, Mirror, Kaleidoscope, Snowfall.
• Faces (10): Cat Ears, Deal With It (sunglasses), Crown, Party Hat, Big Eyes, Chipmunk, Big Mouth, Rainbow and Fire Breath (open your mouth), Laser Eyes (raise your eyebrows).
• Games (5): Balloon Pop (swat the balloons), Breakout (you are the paddle), Ball Pit, Mouth Catch (open wide to eat the food, not the bombs), Flappy Face (your face is the bird; move your head to fly).

Shortcuts: ⌃⌥↑ / ⌃⌥↓ switch lens, ⌃⌥R starts a new game. Games wait for you to step into the picture, count down, and pause if you leave.

Smoother switching

• "Switching to…" shows while a change is on its way. Choosing a background or lens now says so over the preview until the new picture is really showing, so a slow one (a live window, a video, a face lens finding your face) no longer looks like nothing happened.
• Faster frames. The cutout of the next frame now runs while the current one is being composited, instead of one after the other. With the camera feeding it flat out, that is about a third more frames a second (from roughly 30 to roughly 43 on the test Mac), which leaves room to keep up when the Mac is busy. Each frame is still composited with the cutout made from that very frame.
• Lighter on the CPU. The step that smooths your outline from frame to frame now works 16 pixels at a time.
• More in the log. Frame rate, frame time, lens and background changes and how often your face is found are recorded in the system log, so a problem can be traced after the fact.

Install

1. Unzip it and drag Backdrop.app into Applications. It has to live there for macOS to accept its camera extension.
2. Open it. Click the menu bar icon, then Set Up Backdrop Camera, and approve it in System Settings › General › Login Items & Extensions › Camera Extensions.
3. Turn the camera on, then choose Backdrop Camera in your video app.

Upgrading: replace the app in Applications and open it. It updates its own camera extension when it starts.

Requires macOS 15.1 or later on Apple silicon. AI backgrounds need Apple Intelligence.

Verify

Signed with a Developer ID certificate and notarized by Apple. To check the download:

shasum -a 256 -c Backdrop-0.3.0.zip.sha256

Early release

Developed and tested on a single Apple silicon Mac running macOS 27. The engine has automated tests, but the virtual camera and the lenses have had limited real-world testing, so expect rough edges. In particular:

• Face lenses were built and tested against drawn faces, not recorded real ones. Where the crown, ears and hat sit, and how far you have to open your mouth or raise your eyebrows, may need tuning. While a face lens is on, the menu bar shows your live mouth and eyebrow readings.
• Games read your body from the cutout, so poor light or a busy background makes them harder. While a game is on, the preview shows what other people see (not a mirror) so the score reads the right way round.
• There's no Intel build, and no hand tracking yet.
• The camera is switched on and off by hand (menu bar or ⌃⌥B). It doesn't start by itself when another app opens Backdrop Camera.
• Backdrop Camera deliberately advertises 60 fps so macOS doesn't layer its own Background effect over the result. If that effect is on for Backdrop's own camera input, the app warns you.

Bug reports are welcome as issues.