Because the official one is over-engineered, does not work with Discord, does not work in all Linux distros painlessly and just generally badly done.
(This is a third-party client and is not associated with Droidcam in any way, I made this because I had trouble getting the official one to work)
adbv4l2loopbackffmpeg- On Arch based systems, you'll also need to install
android-udevso you can useadbwithout root.
If you have an Arch based system (Arch/Manjaro), you can just do sudo pacman -S android-tools v4l2loopback-dkms ffmpeg android-udev --needed in terminal and you're good to go.
- It is recommended to put this file in PATH, so you can call it from the terminal from everywhere.
- Make sure "USB debugging" is enabled on your phone, it is located in "Developer options"
- "Developer options" are hidden by default, to enable them, go to "About phone", scroll down and tap on the build number seven times.
- "Developer options" should show up in the "System" section.
- Connect your phone, accept all debugging prompts.
- Open the Droidcam app on your phone.
- Run
droidcamin a terminal, enter the root password (v4l2loopbackrequires it), and keep the ffmpeg process running until you are done.- When you are done, press
Qwhile in the terminal to stop the ffmpeg process.
- When you are done, press
- You can also use
droidcam-mpvto open up the camera feed in the mpv player. You could also window share this on Discord. - You can also specify a resolution in the command line, like so:
droidcam 640x480ordroidcam-mpv 640x480. - You can also edit the script and change the options I put at the top (IP, port, endpoint, encode options, etc).
- Droidcam itself has some limitations.
- Resolution is limited to 480p in the free version and 1080p in the paid version.
- Web interface won't work when you have this script running.
- Droidcam has a DRM check, which may fail if your phone does not have Google Play Services installed. This will limit the resolution to 480p.
If you want something better, there's always IP webcam.