Unless you spend a fortune on a laptop, you are not going to get a high-quality webcam. The webcam quality of even high-end laptops leaves you unsatisfied. Now, there are two ways to tackle this issue 1) Purchase an expensive high-end web camera or 2) use the phone as a webcam. You are here because you were searching for ways to use your phone’s camera as a webcam. Our smartphones, nowadays, come with pretty high-end camera lenses which gives 10 times more quality than any of the laptop webcams. So, it’s better to use your phone’s camera as a webcam for laptop/PC rather than spending money on buying a separate webcam. In this Android Tutorial, we are going to tell you how to turn the phone’s camera into a webcam for Laptop/PC.
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How to Turn Your Phone’s Camera into Webcam for Laptop/PC?
The first step in turning your phone’s camera into a webcam is to install the below mentioned-apps on your phone and PC. The app work on a client-server model and will make a connection via IP Address. So make sure that your device and laptop are connected to the same Wi-Fi network.
Download IP Webcam Android Application
Download IP Webcam Desktop Application
Now, let’s get you through the steps you need to follow in order to turn your smartphone’s camera into a web camera for PC and Laptop.
How to use Android Phone as a Webcam
- Download and install the IP Webcam Android application on your Android device.
- Launch the app and scroll all the way down to find Start Server Select it to start the process of turning your phone into IP webcam.
- Next, grant it all necessary permissions.
- Now when you open the app, you will find the URL at the bottom of the screen. It will be in the form of an IP Address. For example, in this case, the URL is http://192.168.0.3:8080.
- Now, download and install the IP Webcam Desktop Application on your PC or Laptop from the link provided above.
- Go to Start Menu of your Windows and search for Configure IP Camera Adapter. Click on it to launch the application.
- The first thing you will see is a Properties dialogue box.
- The first text field reads ‘Camera feed URL’. Type the URL http://192.168.0.3:8080 in this field.
- Add ‘videofeed’ at end of the URL, so the URL will now look like http://192.168.0.3:8080/videofeed.
- That being done, tap on Autodetect next to the Video Size option. This will automatically select the optimal resolution for your IP Webcam setup.
- Once you do that, you should receive a success message: Successfully received image size. Your camera works. This message indicates that your phone is now ready to give feed to your PC as a webcam.
- Click OK and then click Apply to save all the settings.
- That’s it! You have successfully set up your IP Webcam.
Now it’s time to test the whole setup and see if it works properly or not. Because we don’t want you not to be able to use your phone as a webcam when you need it. So, follow the below steps to check whether you are getting proper camera feed from your phone to your PC or Laptop.
Test IP Webcam app on PC
- Open on any web browser on your Desktop. And type the URL: http://192.168.0.3:8080/videofeed in the address bar.
- Select Browser under Video Renderer and HTML5 Wav for Audio Player.
- By default, the IP Webcam application will get a video feed from your phone’s front camera. However, you switch it to a back camera to get even more high-quality video quality. To do so, scroll down a little bit in the application and click on the Front Camera button. The camera switch will now take place.
- You can use your phone as a webcam in any app that requires a webcam.
How to use your Android Phone Camera as a webcam in Skype
- Open Skype and then click Three-Horizontal-Dots, next to your Skype name.
- Select the Settings option from the drop-down menu.
- Navigate to Audio and Video.
- Click on the drop-down menu next to the Camera option. Finally, select MJPEG Camera.
This is how you can turn your phone into a fully working webcam. It works perfectly in Skype.
Also Check: How to turn your smartphone into a CCTV camera
