External camera video is laggy/choppy in conferencing apps until Photo Booth is opened

Seems to be fixed in Chrome 140.0.7339.208

Update and hopefully it works for you.

Just to note I saw the issue in Brave too, which uses Chromium under the hood. It hasn’t updated yet so still broken in Brave for now.

Thanks Alphafoxtrot01 - updated Chrome and it did indeed fix the issue, so I'm assuming once everyone else updates their Chromium the other browsers will be fixed as well. 🤞🏼

I have a Brio 500, and it's laggy since updating to Tahoe. I don't use Chrome.

Firing up other apps like OBS, Photo Booth, Camtasia can fix it temporarily, but even with these apps, it can go laggy again. Sometimes it comes right, then change something, and it goes laggy again.

I've been in contact with Logitech, but they won't tell me if they have a software/firmware update in the works. Their support people just want me to go through all their troubleshooting steps, create videos of the problem, then tell me they can't go outside of their closed system to watch them, even when posted on platforms like Vimeo.

So it may be matter of waiting for Apple or Logitech to come up with a fix, or buying a different brand of webcam. Thankfully I can use my iPhone camera as a webcam if needed.

Another workaround I found that helps is changing the video resolution to Standard Definition in the Google Meet settings. Hope this helps someone.

[Edited by Moderator]

chibislav wrote:

Specifically, the video from my external camera becomes laggy or choppy when using these applications, until I open Photo Booth.

Good computing chibislav !

Appreciate your post on a work-a-round / solution—

To be proactive you can file a bug report / submit your Apple Feedback here:  Product Feedback - Apple

This worked for me on the latest Mac OS Tahoe! It was an issue for me with my DJI Osmo 3, using it as a webcam

jerhinesmith wrote:

After upgrading to macOS Tahoe, my external camera shows noticeably lagging/choppy video when used in video conferencing apps like Google Meet.

However, if I open the built-in Photo Booth app, the video instantly becomes smooth...

Edit

This might only be in Chrome. A user in one of the reddit threads mentioned they are not seeing the same issue if they switch to Safari.

[Edited by Moderator]

Interesting, appreciate the report.

To be proactive you can file a bug report / submit your Apple Feedback here: Product Feedback - Apple

you can search Chrome support—if in doubt search/ contact their: Support/Help/FAQ/Known issues/compatibility/updates…

Contact a third-party vendor - Apple Support

Contact a third-party vendor - Apple Support

ref: Google Chrome Help

That was me (I think) that started the reddit thread... still having the issue. I have an Osmo Pocket 3 and opening Photo Booth (which someone mentioned below) only partially fixes it in Chrome/Edge - it starts piping the video feed into the Meet sessions but it's "zoomed" into the upper-left quadrant of my Osmo image (even though the Osmo looks fine and isn't zoomed in, and Photo Booth also looks fine. Switching Google Meet to standard res doesn't work - in fact it loses connection to the camera instantly and I have to the quit/reopen photo booth to reestablish the link from Chrome/Meet to the Osmo. This is really weird... unusable for me anyway since the Meet video does not show the whole Osmo frame regardless, once I open Photo Booth.

Reddit Thread

Verified (still) that everything works fine in any Apple-specific app (Photo Booth, Safari, etc.) and it does appear to be Chromium/Tahoe related.

EDIT: I had Google Meet framing AND the Osmo tracking on which was causing the zoom issues. That's fixed, but the rest still applies.

Same happened to me!

Worth mentioning that this is also the case with Slack videos.

I would suspect it's anything that's using Chromium under the hood.

Just upgraded to Tahoe 26.0.1 and the lagginess appears to be gone. I hope I'm not speaking too soon, but so far, so good.

Same issue with LogicTech streamcam on MacBook Pro M-series with Tahoe. Low frame rate and image quality in chrome and other browsers until Photo Booth is launched. I have to launch Photo Booth before each Google meet to correct the quality.

Have the same issue with my external Lenovo webcam.

It worked just fine with previous MacOS version but went wrong with update to MacOS26

And also found the same workaround with PhotoBooth app

Same issue here with the C920s and Google Chrome. Opening Photo Booth does fix it. Using external displays with the M1 Pro here also seems to be causing terrible lag.

This is happening in FaceTime using my Logitech Brio camera. Opening Photo Booth does correct the issue in FaceTime too.

Just confirming I have the same issue. I've updated to the latest version of LogiOptions+ which allowed me to edit the camera options but nothing improves the framerate. No large processing hit so it has to be something different with USB device handling.