What to do about a black or blank screen on a Mac

If your camera is not found, or not capturing video, it might need to be restarted.

If you are receiving a blank/black video when attempting to capture your video on your Apple Mac computer, it might be a result of a problem with the driver software that OSX provides to control the camera.

In the event of the driver software having an issue, it is possible to restart the driver and restore your camera to working order.

Before using these instructions, please ensure:

1. You are using an Apple Mac computer
2. You have followed the instructions in the 'Stuck at restart camera?' guide

To restart your camera:

1. Use ⌘+Spacebar to open up Spotlight
2. Type Terminal  to open a Terminal session
3. In the Terminal prompt, type the following command: sudo killall VDCAssistant and click the return key.
4. When prompted, enter your Mac user password to allow the command to execute

If everything worked successfully, your camera driver will have been restarted and you will now be able to capture video from your camera again.