You may receive an error message that states, "mmhmm has encountered a problem. If you are seeing a static color bar image in your video conferencing software this means the virtual camera is not working properly."
You may also notice our color striped test pattern background instead of your presentation when you use Meet, Zoom, etc., which means mmhmm isn't able to communicate with the app you're using.
On macOS Ventura (13.0 and newer)
To resolve this issue, follow the steps below.
- First, navigate to your Mac's System Settings app.
- In System Settings, click General in the left-hand side menu, and then Login Items. If your System Settings app does not look like the screenshot below, follow the steps here.
- Scroll through the list of items and enable the mmhmm inc. background helper by clicking on the slider.
- Restart mmhmm.
On older versions of macOS (12.6.2 and older)
If your System Settings window looks like the screenshot above, you are using an older version of macOS and will need to perform the following steps:
- Quit the app you're using (Zoom, Chrome, Firefox, etc.).
- Quit mmhmm.
- Start the app you were using.
- Start mmhmm.
If that doesn't resolve the issue, open the Activity Monitor app and type "mmhmm" into the search box on the top right-hand side of the window.
You should see two processes running, mmhmm Studio and mmhmmAssistant:
If you don't see the mmhmmAssistant running, you can start it by opening the Terminal application on Mac and pasting in the following, then pressing the return key on your keyboard:
zsh
Next, in the Terminal application, paste in the following, then pressing the return key on your keyboard:
launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchAgents/app.mmhmm.Camera.Assistant.plist launchctl start app.mmhmm.Camera.Assistant
After running those commands, you can quit Terminal. You should then restart the app you were using with mmhmm (Zoom, Chrome, Firefox, etc) so that it can see the mmhmm camera.
Don’t see the answer to your question? If you’re having technical difficulties or want to suggest a topic for this guide, click here to submit a request or email us at help@mmhmm.app.