Smart Phone Webcam App For Mac
May 08, 2020 Start by downloading and installing the DroidCam Wireless Webcam Android app on your smartphone. Next, download and install the DroidCam Client for Windows 10 from the Dev47Apps website. Make sure both your Android phone and Windows 10 computer are on the same Wi-Fi network. Jun 19, 2020 PocketCam tranform your iOS device into a wireless webcam suitable for your Windows PC or Mac. The app is a nifty tool, which does the same work as other competing apps. You can install and configure the app easily. To sum it up, this app does everything it claims to. That way, if you’re looking for a nice webcam app this one is a must to try. Back to menu ↑ WebCamera. WebCamera is a nice webcam app that enables you to turn your smartphone into a high-quality wireless webcam with a microphone. Jul 03, 2020 To get started, download the EpocCam appon your iPhone. Then, install the drivers on your Mac or Windows computer from the Kinoni site. Now, connect both your phone and computer to the same Wi-Fi network. Open the EpocCam appon your phone and launch a compatible video appon your computer.
So we’re all working remotely right now and participating in a lot of video chats. Unfortunately, laptop webcams are generally terrible.
If you want your image to look decent or want the video perspective to come from above your desktop monitor (instead of that off-to-the-side laptop angle many of us are sporting), a proper USB webcam is in order.
Naturally, a surge in demand for webcams has driven inventory down and prices up, particularly for favorably-reviewed models.
If you’re not willing to wait for weeks or pay through the nose, what are you to do? There’s an app for that.
The Test Subjects
Searching around for use-phone-as-a-desktop-webcam apps that work with macOS, I found two options:
- Iriun Webcam
- Iriun Webcam for iOS – Full-featured and free
- Iriun Webcam for Android – Free with a video watermark (removable for a $4.50 in-app purchase)
- Kinoni’s EpocCam
- EpocCam for iOS – Free but ad-laden and limited to an impractical 640×480; the $8 pro version adds features and removes the limits and advertisements
- EpocCam for Android – Free with no ads but also limited to 640×480; the pro version costs $5.50
Both apps require you to install a special app on your Mac, and they’re pretty spartan affairs: a single window with a video thumbnail and a named virtual webcam device appearing in other apps.
I also brought an iPhone SE out of retirement for one last mission.
App Impressions – EpocCam vs. Iriun Webcam
EpocCam iOS
Because of its ads and limitations, EpocCam’s free version clearly isn’t meant to be used for any practical purpose. It exists only to prove that the tech works.
The tech… kinda works. It usually took a while to connect, and it wasn’t always able to recover after one side restarted. Sometimes I had to quit both apps, start the desktop app, then start the mobile app. I would hate to have to do that during a meeting.
Worse yet, I was never able to reliably connect via USB, even in airplane mode. It worked once or twice, but without rhyme or reason.
Apart from that, the app is adequate. There’s a video preview (when it’s not obscured by a fullscreen ad, that is) and buttons to flip horizontally, switch between front/rear camera, and turn on the flashlight. I’m not sure why you’d ever want to turn on the light.
Iriun Webcam iOS
Like EpocCam, Iriun has a button to switch between front/back cameras and a button to blind yourself with the flashlight. Unfortunately, there’s no horizontal flip.
Unlike EpocCam, however, Iriun reliably connected with both wifi and USB. I’m even able to keep the phone in airplane mode!
Android
Just for completeness, I fired up both apps on my Pixel 3.
- Epoc has no UI controls at all, just a (squished) video preview, and it doesn’t autofocus.
- Iriun’s preview image geometry was also a bit off, but the app worked fine, and it has a few options, including camera selection. It also allows me to choose between my phone’s two front cameras; in the past I’ve noticed that few camera-using apps seem to bother with this. Unfortunately, wired use requires enabling USB Debugging.
Image Quality – 2018 Macbook Pro vs. 2016 iPhone SE
I’d like to thank my office mate for volunteering to help test these cameras. I think the image quality speaks for itself.
(Images captured from this webcam test page.)
Hardware Setup
It won’t win any awards, but this, um, rapidly prototyped approach is working nicely.
I put a little putty between the phone and the monitor to provide a bit of adjustability, plus tape to catch the phone if the putty fails.
Caveat and Conclusion
There’s one big caveat to using phones as webcams on macOS: many apps won’t be able to use them.
Virtual webcams are apparently implemented as plugins, where the camera-using app has to load a library from the camera provider. The last few versions of macOS have tightened security around plugins, and applications now have to specifically opt out of a security feature to use them.
Notably, Zoom 4.6.10 removed virtual camera support, which is why Snap Camera doesn’t work anymore.
I’m hoping there’s a better technical solution to this soon (so we can have our security and eat it too), but for now, this phone-as-webcam approach is limited to certain apps.
As of this writing, these apps will not work with virtual webcams:
- Zoom Desktop
- Slack Desktop
- FaceTime
- Photo Booth
- Safari
But these apps will:
- Chrome
- Firefox
- Microsoft Teams
- Quicktime Player
So if you want to use a smartphone as a webcam, or if you want to be a potato, I suggest you join your meetings in Firefox or Chrome.
Update: Enterprising redditors have discovered that it’s possible to workaround the security restriction per-application by unsigning the application bundle with a command like this:
codesign --remove-signature /Applications/zoom.us.app
Smartphone Webcam App For Mac Windows 7
The wisdom of disabling security features like this is debatable, but in a pinch it will allow you to use virtual webcams with problematic Mac apps.