Announcing VirtualCam: give any website a camera

The video call starts in two minutes. The site checks your devices and says it, again: camera not found. The laptop is fine otherwise. The best camera in the room is in your pocket, being ignored.

VirtualCam is our answer, and today it ships — first as a browser extension for Chrome, Edge and Brave, with an Android app and a phone page that already works on iPhone.

Two ways to say yes to the camera question

Phone as Camera pairs your phone with your browser through a QR code or a 6-digit code. Your phone’s camera then shows up to every website as your webcam — 720p, direct and encrypted from phone to browser. Our server introduces the two devices and never sees a frame.

Blank Screen answers the sites that simply refuse to continue without a camera. It generates a clean feed on your machine — a color, an image, a short video loop, or a word of text — and hands it over as a perfectly ordinary camera stream. No hardware, no uploads, no account.

Both modes are free. No watermark, no timer, no trial cliff, no “pro” badge on the features most people actually need.

The parts we almost skipped, and didn’t

• Live status. While a feed is active you can see it — badge, popup, and a small marker on the page. You never have to guess whether your camera is on.
• A test page. Three checks in ten seconds: service reachable, permission sensible, device answering. Built after watching the same three failures break calls for a week.
• Reconnection that assumes reality. Wi-Fi blips, locked screens, laptop sleep. The phone comes back by itself; meanwhile the site falls back to your Blank Screen feed instead of a frozen call.
• Motion you can turn off. Full, reduced or off — and your system’s reduced-motion preference is respected without asking.

What we refused to build

No stealth mode. The on-page marker stays. If the honest person on the other side of the call can’t tell what’s real, the tool has crossed a line, whatever the feature list calls it. That position lives in writing on our responsible use page.

Also no desktop-app support, yet — VirtualCam works inside the browser, and we say so on every page that matters, including the download page. Desktop clients need a system-level driver, which is a different product with a very different risk surface.

What’s next

The Chrome Web Store listing is in review — the “coming soon” button on this site turns into a real install link the day it’s approved. Then the Play Store release of the Android app, then Pro: 1080p streaming and a relay for pairing across different networks, priced once, not monthly.

If any of this sounds like your week, try the phone page — no install needed on the phone side — or read how it works before deciding to trust it. Both are shorter than a webcam delivery estimate.