The first five minutes
Nine times out of ten a missing camera is one of five things: the operating system has not given Skynat Live permission to use cameras; another program already has the camera open; the camera is not in a mode that presents it as a webcam; the cable or port is the problem; or the driver the camera needs is not installed. Work down this list in order — each step takes a minute.
Open Add Source › Camera in Skynat Live. At the top it now says whether the operating system allows the app to use cameras, and lists every camera it can see. If the line says access is blocked, the button next to it opens the exact settings pane to fix it. If access is allowed and the camera is still not in the list, the operating system itself cannot see it, and the rest of this chapter is about why.
Close everything else that might have the camera: Zoom, Teams, Meet in a browser tab, OBS, Photo Booth, the Windows Camera app, the manufacturer's own app. A camera can be held by one program at a time on Windows, and a program that crashed can hold it until you restart the computer.
Try a different USB port, and a different cable. Many USB-C cables are charge-only and carry no data; a camera on one lights up and does nothing. A hub, a KVM switch or a long extension is the next suspect — plug straight into the computer to test. Then press Rescan in Add Source.
Open the camera in something the operating system ships with — Photo Booth on a Mac, the Camera app on Windows. If it works there and not in Skynat Live, it is a permission or a driver-type problem, covered below. If it does not work there either, the camera is not reaching the operating system, and no software will find it until that is fixed.
Permission: the commonest cause
On a Mac, the first launch of Skynat Live asks for the camera and the microphone. If the answer was no, or the question was dismissed, macOS remembers that and never asks again. Open System Settings › Privacy & Security › Camera and switch Skynat Live on, then quit and reopen the app — macOS only applies the change to the next launch. The same pane exists for the microphone. Add Source › Camera shows this state and has a button that opens the pane.
On Windows, there are two switches and both must be on: Settings › Privacy & security › Camera › “Camera access”, and further down “Let desktop apps access your camera”. Skynat Live is a desktop app, so the second one matters and it is often off after a Windows update or on a machine a company set up. Add Source › Camera reads both switches and offers the button that opens the page.
Antivirus suites are the hidden third switch. Kaspersky, Bitdefender, Norton, ESET and Avast all ship a “webcam protection” feature that silently blocks any program they do not recognise from opening the camera. The camera app works, Skynat Live sees the camera in the list but cannot open it, and the error says the device is in use or could not be started. Open the antivirus, find Webcam Protection, and allow Skynat Live.
Cameras that have to be put in webcam mode
A webcam is a webcam the moment it is plugged in. Almost everything else has to be told to behave like one, and until it is, the computer sees a storage device, a charger, or nothing at all.
DJI: the Osmo Pocket 3 and the Osmo Action 4 and 5 all have a webcam mode. Connect the USB-C cable with the camera switched on, and choose Webcam on the camera's screen when it asks — if it does not ask, look under the connection settings. The camera then appears as a plain USB camera on Windows and macOS. On older DJI pockets and actions, and on the DJI Mimo app on a phone, the way in is different: they stream RTMP over Wi-Fi to an address, and Skynat Live takes that as a Custom RTMP input rather than a camera — the address and key to enter are shown when you add that source. A DJI gimbal (Osmo Mobile) is not a camera at all; the phone on it is, with the Skynat Camera app.
GoPro: Hero 8 and later have a webcam mode that needs GoPro's own webcam utility installed on Windows or macOS, and the camera set to webcam in its connection menu. Without the utility the camera charges and mounts as storage. An HDMI capture card is the more reliable route for a long event, because the utility drops out when the camera overheats or sleeps.
Mirrorless and DSLR cameras (Sony, Canon, Nikon, Panasonic, Fujifilm): none of them are webcams by default. Each maker has a webcam utility — Sony Imaging Edge Webcam, Canon EOS Webcam Utility, Nikon Webcam Utility, Panasonic Lumix Webcam, Fujifilm X Webcam — that must be installed and the camera set to the PC or USB streaming mode on its own menu. Recent Sony bodies (2022 on) can do UVC over USB without the utility, chosen on the camera. For anything serious, an HDMI capture card gives a cleaner picture at full frame rate and never times out.
Phones: install the free Skynat Camera app and the phone appears as an input over Wi-Fi with nothing to configure. On an Apple Silicon or 2018-and-later Intel Mac running macOS 13 or newer, an iPhone can also appear as a Continuity Camera. Macs from 2015 and earlier do not get Continuity Camera at all; use the app.
Capture cards (Elgato Cam Link, the small HDMI-to-USB sticks, AverMedia, Magewell): they present as a USB camera, so they follow the webcam rules above. Two things catch people: the card must be on a USB 3 port to deliver 1080p at 30 frames or better — on a USB 2 port it either does not appear or delivers a few frames a second — and the camera feeding it must have its HDMI output switched to a clean signal with the display timeout off, or the picture goes black when the camera sleeps.
Network cameras and encoders: an HDMI encoder or an IP camera does not appear in the camera list at all, because it is not a USB device. It comes in as a Custom RTMP input; the encoder is pointed at the address Skynat Live shows.
Macs from 2010 onwards
Which Skynat Live build a Mac can run is set by its macOS version, and the macOS version a Mac can reach is set by its year. There are three builds: Apple Silicon, Intel for macOS 13 and newer, and “older Macs” for Intel machines on macOS 11 (Big Sur) and 12 (Monterey). A Mac that cannot reach macOS 11 cannot run the app.
Macs from 2015 (MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac, the 2014 Mac mini, the 2013 Mac Pro) go up to macOS 12 Monterey. That is the “older Macs” download. Their USB-A ports are USB 3, so capture cards work at full quality; they have no Continuity Camera; and an i5 or i7 of that generation runs the app comfortably with Super Efficiency on when several cameras are in play. This is also the machine most often reported as “not seeing the camera”, and every case so far has been the permission pane, a charge-only cable, or a camera not in webcam mode.
Macs from 2013 and 2014 go up to macOS 11 Big Sur and run the older-Macs build. Macs from 2012 stop at macOS 10.15 Catalina and Macs from 2010 and 2011 at 10.13 High Sierra; neither can run the app, and the practical answer is a used 2015 machine or a Windows PC. The 2010 and 2011 models also have USB 2 ports only, which rules out 1080p capture cards even where an older program would run.
A Mac-specific trap: virtual cameras and some capture devices that installed a “DAL plugin” — the old style of macOS camera plugin — are not visible to Skynat Live or to any modern browser-based application, because Apple stopped loading them. Affected products include older versions of OBS Virtual Camera, Snap Camera, EpocCam and NDI Virtual Input. Updating them to a version that uses a Camera Extension (2022 or later) fixes it; Skynat Live's own virtual camera output is built the new way.
If a camera that used to work has vanished after a macOS update, reset the camera permission by removing Skynat Live from the Camera list in Privacy & Security and reopening the app so it asks again. On Intel Macs an SMC reset (shut down, then hold Shift-Control-Option and the power button for ten seconds) has revived USB ports that stopped supplying power to a camera.
Windows PCs from 2010 onwards
Skynat Live runs on Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit. Any PC that runs those, from about 2012 onwards, can run the app; what varies with age is USB, graphics and how many cameras it can handle at once.
PCs from 2010 to 2012 (Intel second and third generation, the i5-2xxx and i7-3xxx) usually have a mix of USB 2 and USB 3 ports, and the USB 3 ports are often the blue ones or the ones marked SS. A capture card or a 1080p webcam on a USB 2 port is the single most common reason for a camera that appears but delivers a stutter or nothing. Move it to a USB 3 port. Their graphics chips manage one or two cameras with Super Efficiency on.
PCs from 2013 to 2017 (fourth to seventh generation) are the comfortable floor: USB 3 throughout, Intel HD 4600 graphics or better, and enough for three or four cameras at 1080p. From 2018 onwards nothing about the machine limits cameras; only the ports do.
Three Windows-specific causes. First, Windows 10 N and KN editions ship without the Media Feature Pack, and without it no camera works in any program until the pack is installed from Windows Update › Optional features. Second, USB selective suspend, on by default on laptops, powers cameras down mid-show; turn it off under the power plan's advanced settings. Third, a camera that shows up in Device Manager with a warning triangle needs its driver — most webcams and capture cards use the built-in UVC driver and need nothing, but some capture cards and every DSLR utility install their own, and a Windows update can undo it.
When a camera appears in the list but the picture stays black or the app reports it could not be opened, it is one of: the antivirus webcam block above, another program holding it, a capture card on USB 2, or a camera whose only mode is one the driver cannot deliver at the size asked — Skynat Live asks for 1080p at 30 frames and falls back to whatever the camera offers, so this last case is rare, and the Rescan button tries again.
If it still does not show
Export diagnostics from the account menu in the top right of Skynat Live. The file lists every camera the operating system reported, the permission state, the graphics status and every failed attempt to open a camera with its exact error. Send it with the camera's make and model, the computer's year and operating system version, and whether the camera works in Photo Booth or the Camera app.
The error names in the log mean specific things. NotAllowedError is permission. NotReadableError is another program, an antivirus, or a driver that failed to start the device. NotFoundError means the device vanished between the list and the open — usually a cable or a hub. OverconstrainedError means the camera has no mode near the one asked for; the app retries without a size, so seeing it alone is not a failure.