How to freeze your camera on Zoom
Zoom has no built-in freeze button. To hold a still frame on a Zoom call you need a virtual camera: an app that sits between your webcam and Zoom and decides what Zoom actually receives. Here is how to set one up, and what your options are on each platform.
The short answer
Install a virtual camera app such as FreezingCam, quit Zoom completely, reopen it, then choose FreezingCam under Settings › Video › Camera. Press Freeze and your last frame stays on screen until you unfreeze.
How to freeze your camera on Zoom (Mac)
- 1
Install FreezingCam on your Mac
Download FreezingCam and drag it into your Applications folder. It runs on macOS 10.13 and newer, including Apple Silicon Macs.
- 2
Open FreezingCam
FreezingCam lives in the macOS menu bar rather than the Dock. Launch it once so the virtual camera is registered with the system.
- 3
Quit Zoom completely
Press Cmd+Q in Zoom rather than closing the window. Zoom only scans for new cameras at launch, so a running instance will not list FreezingCam.
- 4
Select FreezingCam as your camera
Reopen Zoom, then go to Settings › Video and pick FreezingCam.com from the Camera dropdown. You should see your normal webcam feed.
- 5
Press Freeze
Click Freeze in the FreezingCam menu bar icon at any point during the call. Everyone else keeps seeing your last frame until you unfreeze.
Zoom quirks worth knowing
- Zoom builds its camera list at launch. If FreezingCam is missing from the dropdown, quit Zoom with Cmd+Q and open it again.
- Turn off Virtual Background and Touch Up My Appearance while you test. Both re-encode your video and can make the frozen frame look slightly off.
- The frozen image is whatever your camera saw at the moment you pressed Freeze, so freeze on a neutral pose rather than mid-blink.
- Your camera indicator light stays on while frozen, because the webcam is still feeding FreezingCam. That is what makes the freeze look natural.
- If the meeting is being recorded, the recording captures the frozen frame, exactly as other participants see it.
What about Windows?
Most searches for freezing a Zoom camera come from Windows, so it is worth being direct about this.
FreezingCam is macOS-only today and we would rather say so than waste your time. A Windows build is in development. Join the Windows waiting list and we will email you when it ships.
In the meantime, the closest free workaround on Windows is OBS Studio: add your webcam as a source, start the built-in Virtual Camera, then select “OBS Virtual Camera” in Zoom. Pausing the source or switching to a still image gives you a frozen frame. It takes longer to set up and there is no one-click freeze, but it works.
Why not just turn the camera off?
You can, and sometimes that is the right call. But a tile going black mid-conversation is conspicuous in a way a still frame is not, and turning it back on draws everyone's attention a second time. A frozen frame keeps the rhythm of the call intact. That is the whole point.