camlight

camlight is a native macOS menu-bar app that switches a USB-powered light when a camera starts or stops streaming. It can control several lights, associate each one with a particular camera, and toggle all configured ports with a global keyboard shortcut.

Features

• Detects camera use without requesting camera access
• Controls power on compatible USB hub ports
• Shows the attached device beside every discovered port
• Groups ports by hub and supports persistent hub names
• Supports configurable on/off delays
• Provides manual menu-bar and global-hotkey toggles
• Runs at login when enabled in Settings
• Bundles its USB control helper; no uhubctl installation is required

Requirements

• macOS 13 or later
• A USB hub that implements per-port power switching (ppps)

Not every hub that advertises port switching actually cuts VBUS power. Test your hardware before relying on it.

Build

The repository includes the pinned uhubctl and libusb source needed by the app. The only build requirement is Apple's Command Line Tools:

xcode-select --install
make

The resulting camlight.app is self-contained. Copy it to /Applications and open it. macOS may ask you to approve the app because local builds are ad-hoc signed.

Run the parser and settings migration tests with:

make test

Usage

1. Open Settings from the menu-bar light bulb.
2. Add a light and choose its camera and USB port.
3. Optionally rename the selected port's hub.
4. Click the Toggle hotkey control and type a modified key combination. Press Delete while recording to disable the shortcut.

Left-clicking the menu-bar icon or pressing the hotkey toggles all configured lights. Right-clicking opens the app menu, where Reset All Ports to On can restore every port on every discovered switchable USB hub. Removing a light from camlight only stops managing it; removal does not change that port's current power state. A newly added light is initially assumed to be on, so adding it does not immediately switch off its port.

License

camlight is licensed under GPL-2.0-only. It incorporates code from uhubctl, which uses the same license, and libusb, which is LGPL-2.1-or-later. See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md for pinned versions and attribution.