Computing / Online / Social / Tech

Turn your phone into a webcam in less than 5 minutes

- by Life Hacker
Turn Your Phone Into A Webcam Header

As the lockdowns roll on, working from home is increasingly the only option for lots of people. Sometimes that means you need to zoom etc with others. Or maybe you need to a webcam socialise with friends and family in other locations.

Whatever your reasons for needing a webcam, not all of us has one. In my house there is one webcam. It was mine. Until my son needed it for his schooling. Which left me in a pinch. However, using the below method, I was back up and running in minutes. In fact, I now have a better stream quality than I ever had with a dedicated webcam!

Without further ado, let me show you how.

Android Only – Turn Your Phone Into A Webcam

The program I used for this is called DroidCam. Personally, it worked flawlessly for me wirelessly, but I will go through the steps needed to set it up to work wired.

  1. Download the App from the Play store on your phone and the Windows client on your pc.
  2. Install the Windows client and double click the icon on your desktop to open.
  3. Open the phone app, make a note of the IP address and copy it into the DroidCam client on your desktop. That’s the numbers circled in red in the images below if you are unsure.
  4. Tick video and audio and click start. You should be done. An image should from your phone should now show up in the program on your pc.
  • DroidCam Android App
  • DroidCam Windows Client

If you are using this with videoconferencing software, let’s run through a few do’s and don’ts.

DO: Start the Windows client and phone app before you start your software.

DO: Make sure you have ticked the box starting your audio as well as video.

DON’T: Try to use this with software downloaded from the windows store. It won’t work for some reason. If you are using Skype etc, it needs to be the desktop client, downloaded from Skype’s own website.

DO: Make sure if the app is not working that you have been into your video program (Zoom, Team, Meet or other) and checked that the microphone and video are set to the DroidCam as source.

What if I want to use it wired?

Good question. This is a little more complicated. First your phone has to have USB Debugging enabled. Don’t panic, it sounds more difficult than it is.

  1. Go to settings on your phone and find about phone. Tap on build number seven times. Sounds like a spell but honestly this is what you need to do.
  2. Go back into settings, you will now see a new option called Developer Settings. Check under Advanced settings if you can’t see it. Tap it and scroll down to USB Debugging and toggle it to on.
  3. Plug your phone into your PC. If the only thing that happens is your phone starts to charge, pull down notifications and change the setting to File Transfer mode.
  4. Open the DroidCam client on your PC and click the USB icon. That’s the middle icon above connect over WiFi (LAN).
  5. Use the menu to find your phone and click it.
  6. Check video and audio as before and click start.

That should be it. Congratulations! You now know how to turn your phone into a webcam. Pass it on to anyone else who may need to know.