A simple, free alternative for displaying your camera feed during screen shares and screen recordings.
FacePane gives you a small, floating window with your camera feed on your current screen!
This is intended for making screencaps with the "Screen Recording" tool Apple provides.
Or use it for Face Time/Zoom/Teams/Slack/Discord calls where you want to share your screen but still keep your face visible.
I wanted something very small and simple without the entire bloat of a full-blown studio like CapCut.
I also wanted a freely floating window I can use in any app that's resizable, customizable, and clean.
It's great for doing business and showing off your code!
Why not? It's a simple utility that took me less than a few hours to vibe-code with Codex and ChatGPT & it works perfectly.
Also, I don't have an Apple Developer subscription right this minute to deploy to the App Store...
So, I've decided just to share the code on my GitHub for anyone to use this as a portfolio piece.
Hope you enjoy!
This is an XCode project. Install XCode, then you can simply clone the repo and open it in XCode and click "Run".
- Set build destination to your Mac
- In Xcode’s top toolbar, make sure the run destination says something like: "My Mac" (not iPhone or simulator)
- Set signing for local use. You do not need paid Apple Developer Program for this.
- Click the project in the left sidebar:
- FacePane project → FacePane target → Signing & Capabilities
- Signing Certificate: Sign to Run Locally
- Or leave automatic signing enabled with your personal Apple ID team.
- Build Release mode
- Product → Scheme → Edit Scheme...
- Select Run on the left.
- Set: Build Configuration: Release
- Close the sheet.
- Then build: Product → Build (or: Cmd + B)
- Find the built app
- Product → Show Build Folder in Finder
- Navigate in Finder to Product -> Build -> Release
- You should see "FacePane.app"
- Copy this to Applications
- Copy it to Applications
- In Finder, copy: FacePane.app to: /Applications
Now you can open it like a normal app!