15 Free and Open-source WebCam Apps and Solutions For Windows, Linux, and macOS
In today's world, video conferencing has become an essential part of communication. Web Camera software provides a low-cost solution for those who do not have access to a webcam, without compromising on the quality of video and audio.
Additionally, the ability to switch between front and rear cameras makes it convenient for users to switch between recording themselves and the surrounding environment.
In this post, we offer you the best multipurpose open-source webcam apps.
1- WebCamoid
A simple free Webcam client app for Windows, Linux, and macOS. It also offers an Android port. It supports recording, offers several video effects, and many more.
- Recommended
2- IP Freely
This project is an application that can be used on multiple platforms. It allows you to view and record live RTSP and HTTP(S) streams from up to 4 IP cameras, as well as connect to local web cameras. You can also access a camera's on-board storage, such as an SD card, and download its video content to your PC or any other device on your network, such as a NAS.
Features:
- Clean and intuitive UI, hopefully!
- Multithreaded.
- Cross-platform (Windows and Linux).
- Supports up to 4 user configurable IP or web camera streams displayed in a 2x2 grid.
- If a suitable URL is provided then you can view a camera's on-board storage (e.g. SD card) and download the content to your PC.
- The user can view a larger expanded view from any of the 4 streams.
- Still snapshot images can be taken from the camera feeds at any time with the click of a button.
- Local AVI (DivX on Windows, XDiv on Linux) video recordings can be made from the camera streams at the click of a button.
- Scheduled recording can be setup and enabled on a per-camera basis, with the schedule allowing selection of days and active hours in the day.
- Motion detection can be setup with user-configurable scheduling (similar to scheduled recordings).
- Per camera user definable motion detection regions.
- Per camera motion detection algorithm sensitivity (off, low sensitivity, medium sensitivity, high sensitivity and manual settings).
- Built-in disk space manager. User can configure how many days recordings to keep and a maximum percentage of used disk space. The disk manager periodically i nthe background will remove the oldest data first and ensures used space always falls within defined limits.
- (Planned) Motion triggered email send email alerts.
- (Planned) Built-in web server to display some basic features, such as periodically updated snapshots from the camera feeds.
dac19763- SmoothStream
SmoothStream is a webcam and PiCamera Streaming over the Network with Python. It is easy to setup, configure and use. The project is licensed under the GPL-3.0 License.
CT834- Raspberry Pi Axis IP Camera Wall Display
Raspberry Pi wall display for AXIS IP webcams (or any rtsp video stream). This script uses omxplayer to display the camera streams directly to the RPi's framebuffer, so there's no need for X11 or a browser or any of that mess. The h264 decoding is hardware-optimized for the RPi's GPU and is extremely efficient. I'm seeing a load average of 0.08% while decoding four independent camera streams on an RPi 3.
nugget5- tCamView
tCamView is a simple WebCam viewer software. You can display your webcam video on top of the computer screen.
Features
- 4 PictureSize Modes
- Zoom [Z]: Enlarge to fit the window size while maintaining the aspect ratio of the webcam video (aka. Uniform)
- Stretch [X]: Enlarge to fill the window size without considering the aspect ratio of the webcam video (aka. Fill)
- Center [C]: No resizing. If the window size is changed, the center area of the webcam video is displayed
- Alt.Stretch [A]: Enlarge to fill the window size while maintaining the aspect ratio of the webcam video. If the window size is changed, the webcam video content is clipped to fit in the window dimensions. (aka. UniformToFill)
- 5 Window Styles
- Normal Border (Resizable) [N or Esc]
- Borderless Ellipse (FixedSize) [E]
- Borderless Rectangle (FixedSize) [R]
- Borderless Rounded Rectangle (FixedSize) [W]
- Full Screen [F]
- Image Flipping
- Horizontal Flipping [H]
- Vertical Flipping [V]
- Opacity Control
- Increase the opacity [Up Arrow]
- Decrease the opacity [Down Arrow]
- Opacity 100% (max) [Right Arrow]
- Opacity 20% (min) [Left Arrow]
- Additional Features regarding the Clipboard
- GetImage From Clipboard [G or Ctrl+V]
- SetImage To Clipboard [I or Ctrl+C]
- SetImage To Clipboard After 5 Seconds [D]
- CopyScreen To Clipboard [S]
- Resume CameraPreview (From ClipboardView) [Space]
- Additional Features related to Zoom In/Out
- CropImage (ZoomIn) [Page Up]
- CropImage (ZoomOut) [Page Down]
- Additional Features related to Window Size
- Increase Window Size [P]
- Decrease Window Size [M]
- Always on Top [T]
- Minimize [L]
- Quit [Q]
- Display multiple webcam videos with multiple instances
- Move the window with the left mouse button drag
- Borderless Ellipse/Rectangle/Rounded Rectangle Windows can be resized with [P] and [M].
tCamView is released under the GNU GPLv3 License.
6- Webcam Capture API
This library allows you to use your built-in or external webcam directly from Java. It's designed to abstract commonly used camera features and support various capturing frameworks.
The included features for this project are:
- Simple, thread-safe and non-blocking API,
- No additional software required,
- Supports multiple platforms (Windows, Linux, macOS, etc.) and various architectures (32-bit, 64-bit, ARM),
- Get images from built-in or USB-connected PC webcams,
- Get images from IP / network cameras (as MJPEG or JPEG),
- Offers ready to use motion detector,
- All required JARs Available in Maven Central,
- Offers possibility to expose images as MJPEG stream,
- It is available as Maven dependency or standalone ZIP binary (with all dependencies included),
- Swing component to display video feed from camera,
- Swing component to choose camera (drop),
- Multiple capturing frameworks are supported.
- Raspberry Pi support.
7- Captura
This simple app supports screen capture, webcam view, audio, cursor, mouse click capture and keystroke.
Hamza Mousa
MathewSachin8- Mini Video Me
This is a simple and small webcam player focused on providing an easy way to add and control your webcam during recordings. It works on macOS, Windows, and Linux.
maykbrito9- Cam2IP
This project converts any webcam into an IP-camera. The script is written in Go and can be easily deployed using Docker.
gen2brain10- webcam app
A free and open-source web app to view webcams and their corresponding geographic.
CHRL-VIU11- Webcam component for React
Webcam component for React.
mozmorris12- JavaCameraView
A sample Java application using Swing GUI to display camera feed on JFrame. This project uses OpenCV library which will be auto imported using Maven. This application captures frames continuously from system's default camera and display it on JPanel.
aditkumar113- mpvcam
mpvcam is a simple posix script to play your webcam in the mpv player without any latency.
amarakon14- WebCam Easy
This is a JavaScript library for accessing webcam stream and taking photos.
You can easily add it as a module to your own app.
- Streaming webcam on desktop computer or mobile
- Switch back or front cameras on mobile
- Take pictures and be able to download.
bensonruan15- Cam-Recorder-HTML5-Video-Audio
This is an open-source Camera / Microphone Recorder app 📹🎙 in HTML5: Audio/Video Recording, Download, Send to Server, Instant Recording Booth with Recordings. 💯100% Web Based, 🚫No Flash.
Features:
- Instant recording booth
- Access recorder with a button
- List of recordings (video, audio)
- Toggle Audio/Video recording mode
- Select Microphone, Camera, Resolution
- Playback recording
- Discard and start recording again if needed
- Download recording
- Send (upload) recording to server
- 100% web based in all major HTML5 browsers
videowhisper
