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Vigil – see which apps use your Mac's camera or microphone

Vigil – see which apps use your Mac's camera or microphone

by sh3ll3y·Mar 8, 2026·1 point·0 comments
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AI Analysis

●●SolidSolve My ProblemCozy

Answers 'which app is using my mic?' when macOS won't tell you.

Strengths
  • •Real-time hardware detection via IOKit + CoreMediaIO is technically sound; ~2s polling latency acceptable.
  • •Honest about attribution limits: acknowledges ambiguous cases, doesn't oversell accuracy.
  • •Privacy-first: local-only, no telemetry, free to download with optional license.
Weaknesses
  • •Narrow platform scope (macOS only); iOS version exists but feature parity unclear.
  • •Attribution ambiguity in edge cases remains unsolved; doesn't push beyond macOS signals.
Category
Productivity
Target Audience

macOS users concerned with privacy, power users, professionals on video calls

Post Description

Hi HN,

I built Vigil, a small macOS menu bar utility that shows which apps are using your camera or microphone.

macOS already shows the green/orange privacy indicator dots, but it doesn't show which application triggered them. If you have multiple apps open (Zoom, browsers, Slack, etc.), it can be difficult to know which one is actually accessing the device.

Vigil runs in the menu bar and monitors camera and microphone access in real time. When a device becomes active it attempts to attribute usage to the responsible application and displays the app name and icon.

Some technical details:

- real-time monitoring with ~2 second polling - multiple detection signals (hardware access via IOKit, CoreMediaIO state, and permission correlations) - per-app attribution when possible - notifications when devices become active - activity history with configurable retention

The app works on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs.

Everything runs locally — there is no telemetry and no network communication.

I built it because I wanted more visibility into camera/mic access than the system indicators provide.

Happy to answer questions or hear feedback.

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