Continuity Camera: Apple explains how your iPhone will become a Mac webcam

Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge

It was easy to laugh yesterday when Apple announced that you will soon be able to use your phone on your mac to get a betterWebcam. Jony Ive was the subject of a joke. Others wondered if this was the best Apple could come up with after years of blurry MacBook images and how the Apple studio display camera fell short.

Karen Xing, an Apple software engineer, explained how the new Continuity Camera feature for macOS Ventura will work at the upcoming World Wide Developers Conference in June. It could make your phone a full-fledged camera for mac, one that does most everything you would expect and more.

If you don't want to watch a presentation for 20 minutes, here's the link.

Every camera app should work because macOS will detect your phone as a camera. Developers don't need to do anything to their apps for them to work, even though Apple only showed off the new features during the keynote.

Portrait Mode, "Studio Light," and Center Stage are available regardless of the app. You can find them in a control center menu.

You can change the orientation of your phone. If your phone is in portrait orientation, you will get a zoom-in effect. The difference is shown in a quick and dirty image sliders.

When you install the other apps, they will switch to your phone. Apple has an automatic camera selectionAPI that other apps can use, too.

Not just wireless, it works wired. If you're worried about interference or your phone's battery life, you're right.

Photos and video can be taken from your Mac with the help of apps. It's possible to pass along face detection and body detection data, which sounds a little intriguing and a little weird at the same time. The captures max out at 60 frames per second.

There is an application for Apple's nifty desk view mode. Apple figured out a way to bend and crop the images on the phone to make them look better on the desk. It is available for app developers as well.

Video from Desk View can be captured in 30 frames per second.

There is a better demo of desk view in this video.

It doesn't work with the old phones you have in a drawer. The iPhone 6S, 7, and first-gen iPhone SE won't be getting the iOS 16 software update due to Continuity Camera requirements. It feels like it could be a great way to use an older phone that isn't worth much. There are other ways to use a spare phone.