Turning Off Center Stage

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Turning Off Center Stage

This is a tip, not a question.

A few people have asked how to turn off 'Center Stage', the feature that tracks you on your Mac's camera, which affects, Photo Booth, FaceTime and Zoom…maybe others.

Apple's instructions are "macOS Ventura 13 or macOS Monterey 12: Click Control Center in the menu bar, click Video Effects, then click Center Stage." Use Center Stage to keep you centered in the camera frame - Apple Support

…but it's not there. 'Center Stage' is not in Settings, either.

This post gives instructions for turning off Center Stage in Zoom Problem turning off Centre Stage when usi… - Apple Community

…which I applied to FaceTime (open FaceTime and click the top-right menu to reveal the Center Stage on/off button).

This worked and turned it off Photo Booth, too. So it looks like a *general* control, not an app-specific control. Therefore, it should surely be in Settings, not in a particular app 🤷‍♀️

Mac Studio (2022)

Posted on Sep 2, 2025 01:29 AM

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Answer 1

Sep 4, 2025 07:26 AM in response to Seabeethree

What the thread you linked to suggests is basically how it works in any OS that I've tried it on - you need to be using the camera in some application in order to access these controls. It could be Zoom, it could be Photo Booth, or any other app that records video; I usually do it with Quicktime Player: press Command-Option-N or choose File->New Movie Recording, and the green camera menu appears.

I can't test in Ventura (no Mac capable of running it anymore), but I also do not recall there being "Video Effects" in Control Center (unless maybe those would also only appear when using the camera?).

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