Automating CamDial with Shortcuts

Action	What it does
Apply Preset	Puts a saved look on the camera it belongs to
Apply Starred Look	Puts the starred look on the camera you are using
Set Camera Control	Moves one setting, as a percentage of that camera’s range

Why the percentage

Every camera’s range is its own. One sensor’s brightness ends at 255 and another’s at 15, so a shortcut written with a raw number quietly means something different on the next camera — and you find out on a call. A percentage means the same thing everywhere, and the action tells you the real value afterwards: “White Balance is now 4600 K”.

A meeting automation

Shortcuts → Automation → New → App → Zoom → Is Opened → Run Immediately. Add Apply Preset and choose your call look.

Add a second automation for Is Closed with the look you prefer the rest of the time.

This does the same job as a per-app rule in CamDial itself. The rule is simpler to set up and puts your old settings back automatically; the automation is worth it when you want to do something else at the same time — set the look, mute a Focus, open a document.

Meetings in a browser

Google Meet is a web page, so no app-based automation can tell a Meet tab from any other tab, and a rule on Chrome would fire for all of them.

Two things do work:

A Focus filter. Make a “Meeting” Focus, add CamDial’s Set camera look filter, and turn the Focus on when a call starts. That is a decision you make, so it fires exactly when you mean it.
A link on a Stream Deck key or Raycast command — see camdial:// links.

Time of day

Shortcuts can run a Time of Day automation: warm look at six in the evening, neutral in the morning. CamDial has no clock of its own, and does not need one while Shortcuts has a better one.

When the app is not running

Every action starts CamDial in the background if it has to. Nothing appears on screen: it has no Dock icon unless you asked for one, and no window opens.

If an action reports that the camera is not connected, that is exactly what it means — the look belongs to a camera that is not on this Mac right now. CamDial will not apply it to whichever camera happens to be plugged in instead.