Getting the driver working is two steps:

• Firmware extraction: Run the script to download and install the firmware from Apple. Gentoo users using the ebuild skip this step. NixOS users can also skip this step.
• Installation: Installing the driver itself.

See Additional Notes below in case you come across any issues.

Download the firmware extraction tools and following these steps:

• Clone the git repository with $ git clone https://github.com/patjak/facetimehd-firmware.git
• Dependencies for make are curl, xzcat and cpio
• In the cloned repository type $ make and then as root type # make install (20.03.2023: verified on MacBook Model A1502, Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS, where the first $ make shall be changed into # make)
• Result should be like:

$ make
Dowloading the driver, please wait...


Found matching hash from OS X, El Capitan 10.11.5
==> Extracting firmware...
 --> Decompressing the firmware using gzip...
 --> Deleting temporary files...
 --> Extracted firmware version 1.43.0

# make install

Copying firmware into '/usr/lib/firmware/facetimehd'

Note: a reboot may be required after installing the modules before they will work (seems to be the case on MacBook Pro (13", late 2013).

The camera works fine without the sensor calibration files but can produce incorrect colors.

To extract the sensor calibration files from the OS X driver see: Extracting the sensor calibration files

See the Installation page for instructions

Try: mplayer -vo gl tv:// If that did not work try this: mplayer -vo gl2 tv:// And if none of the two above worked try: mplayer -vo gl3 tv://

This is because some Linux applications do not support high resolution cameras. To fix this go to Cheese settings and change the resolution to something lower. Then turn the computer OFF, and ON again. (Not reboot). This should fix the corrupted image.