Facetimehd Toggle

-- A little something I made to make me and other linux on mac users happy --

What is this?

Just a simple systray applet to toggle facetimehd camera in MacBooks running Linux as needed using modprobe.

Why this exists?

Because no one does it. Keeping the module loaded prevents few macs from going to sleep including mine and it is painful to enable and disable using terminal when I'm in a hurry to a meeting. I hope this will be helpful for someone out there.

About this fork

This fork adds handling for a related issue: leaving the camera module loaded can also prevent ASPM-dependent CPU power states (C6/C7) from being reached, while disabling ASPM outright causes image artifacts while the camera is active. This fork toggles ASPM alongside the module load/unload, and adds a suspend hook so the camera is safely unloaded before the system sleeps.

Plus, this also increases the privacy

ASPM handling

Some MacBook models exhibit a tradeoff on the FaceTime HD camera's PCIe link: with ASPM enabled, the CPU can reach deeper power states (C6/C7), but the camera produces image artifacts while active. With ASPM disabled, the camera is clean but the CPU is kept out of its deepest idle states.

This fork resolves the tradeoff by only enabling ASPM while the camera is off:

Camera state	ASPM	Trade-off
Enabled	Disabled	Clean image, CPU stays out of C6/C7
Disabled	Enabled	CPU can reach C6/C7

This is handled by facetimehd-camera-on.sh and facetimehd-camera-off.sh, both of which call the generic facetimehd-aspm-set.sh (adapted from mcgrof's aspm-tuning.sh, see license header in that file).

Hardware note: the PCIe addresses (ROOT_COMPLEX/ENDPOINT) in these scripts are hardcoded for a MacBook Pro 13" Early 2015. If you're on a different model, find your own addresses with lspci -t and update the values at the top of facetimehd-camera-on.sh and facetimehd-camera-off.sh before installing.

How to setup?

Setup FacetimeHD kernel module driver

Same commands for both Debian and Arch-based distros, unless separately listed.

1. First you need the facetimehd kernel module driver to be installed:

   Fedora: Use copr frgt10/facetimehd-dkms

   Debian: Follow the instructions here.

   Arch:

   yay -S facetimehd-dkms # arch linux syntax

2. Disable it from loading at startup:

   sudo vim /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-facetimehd.conf # this will open the file with vim

   then add following line to it.

   blacklist facetimehd

3. Rebuild the initramfs and reboot the system:

   Fedora:

   sudo dracut --force --regenerate-all
   reboot

   Debian:

   update-initramfs -u

   Arch:

   mkinitcpio -P # arch linux syntax
   reboot

4. Install dependencies

   Fedora:

   sudo dnf install cargo atk-devel gdk-pixbuf2-devel glib2-devel pango-devel gtk3-devel cairo-devel libayatana-appindicator3

   Debian:

   sudo apt install cargo libglib2.0-dev libpango1.0-dev libatk1.0-dev libgdk-pixbuf-2.0-dev libgtk-3-dev

   Arch:

   sudo pacman -S rust cargo gtk3

5. Download the binary from the releases and move it to /usr/bin or build it using the following steps:

   git clone https://github.com/lakotamm/facetimehd-toggle.git
   cd facetimehd-toggle
   cargo build --release
   sudo cp target/release/facetimehd_toggle /usr/bin/
   

6. Install the ASPM scripts

   sudo cp facetimehd-aspm-set.sh facetimehd-camera-on.sh facetimehd-camera-off.sh /usr/local/bin/
   sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/facetimehd-aspm-set.sh /usr/local/bin/facetimehd-camera-{on,off}.sh

7. Suspend safety (optional but recommended)

   To make sure the camera doesn't interfere with suspend, install the sleep hook so it's always unloaded before the system sleeps:

   sudo cp facetimehd-sleep.sh /usr/lib/systemd/system-sleep/
   sudo chmod +x /usr/lib/systemd/system-sleep/facetimehd-sleep.sh

   The camera stays off after resume — you'll need to re-enable it manually from the tray icon if you need it again

8. Set up service enabling ASPM on boot (optional but recommended)

   After booting, the camera by default does not have enabled power saving, and it will block the CPU from going to C6/C7 states, even if the facetimehd module is unloaded. The solution is to use a service to enable ASPM on boot.

   sudo cp facetimehd-aspm-boot.service /etc/systemd/system/
   sudo systemctl enable facetimehd-aspm-boot.service

9. You can now run the applet by using the following command: /usr/bin/facetimehd_toggle

Make the systray auto start on boot

Using systemd

1. Create systemd unit:

mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user
vim ~/.config/systemd/user/facetimehd-toggle.service

and add following,

[Unit]
Description=FaceTimeHD Toggle Tray
After=graphical-session.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/facetimehd_toggle
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

2. Enable and start the service:

systemctl --user enable facetimehd-toggle.service
systemctl --user start facetimehd-toggle.service

3. Check status:

systemctl --user status facetimehd-toggle.service

License

This project is licensed under the MIT license.

facetimehd-aspm-set.sh is adapted from a script originally written by Luis R. Rodriguez, distributed under an ISC-style license — see the header comment in that file for the original terms.