EpocCam is discontinued — free ways to keep using your iPhone as a camera.

What happened

Elgato has discontinued EpocCam — the app is no longer being developed or sold. Existing installs may keep working for now, but there will be no updates or fixes as new iOS and macOS versions ship. That's the whole story: a pioneering app reached its end of life, as apps sometimes do.

What it means if you paid for it

Nothing dramatic today — if your chain works, it works. The risk is the next OS update: with no maintenance, any breakage becomes permanent. The sensible move is to pick a replacement before an update forces you to, ideally one that doesn't re-create the same single-app dependency.

Option 1 — Continuity Camera (built in, Mac-only)

If all you need is a great webcam on a Mac, Apple already ships it: Continuity Camera turns your iPhone into a system-wide camera, wirelessly or over USB. It's free, zero-setup, and perfect for calls and single-camera streams. It is Mac-only and gives you limited manual control — but for many EpocCam use cases it's the shortest path.

Option 2 — VDO.Ninja (browser-based, cross-platform)

VDO.Ninja pipes a phone's camera into OBS through WebRTC in the browser — no app installs, works across platforms, and it's brilliant for remote guests. The trade-offs are the ones WebRTC brings: quality and latency depend on the connection, and there's no camera-side production tooling.

Option 3 — the Airlive stack (free, made for production)

If your iPhone was doing camera duty — not just webcam duty — this is what we build. Airlive Camera (free; coming to the App Store — see Downloads) streams over the local network to a free receiver on your Mac:

1. Straight into OBS Studio with the free Airlive for OBS plugin — auto-discovery, latency presets, tally and remote control from the source properties. Setup guide here.
2. Or into Airlive Bridge, a free multicam switcher — live multiview across several phones, CUT, tally lights, remote exposure control, then output to OBS, NDI®, SRT, RTSP or HDMI. Full walkthrough here.

Multicam, tally and remote camera control are things the webcam-app generation never had — and the wire protocol is open, so the setup doesn't die with any one app. Requirements, honestly: iPhone 11+ on iOS 17+, and a Mac — macOS 13+ for Bridge, macOS 14+ / OBS 30+ for the plugins.

Airlive Bridge — Multiview

PREVIEW

PROGRAM

CAM 1 CAM 2 CAM 3 SCREEN

Migration checklist

1. Note the resolution and frame rate your scenes expect.
2. Install the Airlive for OBS plugin (quit OBS first), or Bridge for multicam.
3. Add the Airlive Camera source in OBS and connect the phone from Airlive Camera → Live.
4. Pick a latency preset and match your old canvas settings.
5. Do one rehearsal stream, then remove the old virtual-camera driver so OBS stops listing it.

FAQ

Is it still safe to use EpocCam? If it works for you today, sure — just plan around the fact that it won't be updated.

I'm on Windows. Continuity Camera is Mac-only; VDO.Ninja works anywhere a browser runs. Airlive receivers are Mac-first today — that's the honest answer.

Can I run more than one phone? That's exactly what Bridge multicam is for.