General · EdgepediaSeptember 17, 20264 min read

Photo Booth

Photo Booth is the built-in camera application on Apple's Mac computers, used to take single photographs, sequences of four photos, and video recordings with the computer's built-in camera or a connected external camera.¹

Key fact	Detail
Capture modes	Single photo, a 4-up sequence of four photos, or video recording¹
Cameras	The Mac's built-in camera, an external video camera, or the rear-facing camera of an iPhone used as a webcam¹
Countdown and flash	A three-second countdown precedes each photo and the screen flashes on capture; holding Option skips the countdown and holding Shift skips the flash¹
Effects	Applied live, before capture; they cannot be added to a photo after it is taken²
Common uses	Profile pictures for the Mac user account, contact card photos in Contacts, and quick selfies or short videos³

Capture modes and controls

The app offers three capture modes selected from buttons in the lower-left corner of the window. The Picture button takes a single photo, the Four Pictures button takes a sequence of four photos in a row (called a 4-up photo), and the Video button records video until the Stop button is clicked.¹ If an external video camera is used, it must be connected and turned on before capture.¹

Countdown and flash. By default, a three-second countdown runs before each photo is taken, and the screen flashes when the shutter fires, brightening the subject with light from the display.¹ Holding the Option key while clicking Take Photo or Record Video turns off the countdown; holding Shift while clicking Take Photo turns off the flash; holding both keys turns off both. The flash can also be toggled from the menu with Camera > Enable Screen Flash.¹

The app can run in full screen to fill the display, or in Split View alongside another app.¹

Effects

Photo Booth includes a gallery of special effects that are applied as the snapshot is taken or the movie clip is recorded. The effects must be chosen before capture; they cannot be applied to a photo after the fact.² Clicking the Effects button opens pages of effects browsed with arrows; options include color treatments such as Sepia, which gives an old-fashioned look, as well as background effects that replace the scene behind the subject.³ The background effect works better when the subject sits in front of a plain background with nothing moving in it.⁴

Cameras and integration with macOS

Photo Booth captures from the Mac's built-in FaceTime HD camera by default, and Apple's guidance covers use with an external video camera as well.¹^•³ On current versions of macOS, the rear-facing camera of an iPhone can also serve as the webcam for the app.¹

Captured photos and videos appear as thumbnails along the bottom of the window. From there they can be shared to a chosen destination, or dragged directly to the desktop or into other apps such as Pages or Keynote.³ A common use is taking a selfie to set as the contact card photo in Contacts or as the profile picture for the user account on the Mac.³

History and reception

User sentiment has been mixed.

Photo Booth and the wider photo booth market

The Mac app shares its name with, but is distinct from, the photo booth software category used by professional event and rental operators. That market includes products such as LumaBooth (with dslrBooth on Windows), Snappic, Simple Booth, Touchpix, Sparkbooth, and Darkroom Booth, which tether DSLR cameras, drive printers, collect guest payments, and run 360-degree video rigs; prices in 2026 ranged from free open-source options to subscriptions of roughly $50 to $70 per month and one-time licenses of $149 to $295.⁶ Hardware vendors have also entered the space: Fujifilm's Instax Spot, launched in May 2026, is a standalone instant-film photo booth that doubles as a print station for smartphone photos via QR code.⁷ The physical photobooth format itself, from which the app takes its name and its four-up strip layout, has a history of about a century as party and passport equipment.⁸

References

Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 17, 2026; Sep 30, 2026; Oct 15, 2026 · Edited: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 15, 2026