MacBook Air model 2013 running Ubuntu and working builtin camera
Stefan Helander

Macbook Air builtin camera on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

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When Apple decided that it was time for my MacBook Air model 2013 to die, by not supplying anymore OS updates, I decided to install Ubuntu instead of throwing a piece of perfectly working hardware away. The only reason this hardware was “obsolete” is because Apple decided it to be. The same behaviour goes for Microsoft by the way and I think we need a debate about climate impact where people need to buy new hardware just because Apple and Microsoft decides so, but that is another discussion. The reason you are here because you probably want your builtin camera to work with Ubuntu on your MacBook Air 🙂

Anyway, this is how I got the builtin camera to work under Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (these are my notes on how I did it from collected searches on the Internet):

sudo apt install git curl xzcat cpio
git clone https://github.com/patjak/facetimehd-firmware.git
cd facetimehd-firmware
make
sudo make install
cd ..
git clone https://github.com/patjak/bcwc_pcie.git
cd bcwc_pcie
make
sudo make install

Someone had noted that at this point a reboot was needed. I didn’t need to do that. It just worked by doing:

sudo depmod
sudo modprobe facetimehd