Your phone as a webcam and microphone

How it works

The phone captures and encodes; the computer decodes and hands the picture to the operating system as a camera. Every stage is built so nothing waits:

• The phone encodes in hardware. H.264 with no B-frames, so each frame leaves the moment it’s encoded.
• Nothing piles up. The send queue holds about one frame. When Wi-Fi stalls, the phone drops stale frames instead of building a backlog, so delay never creeps up during a long call.
• The computer decodes on arrival. No pacing buffer and no audio–video sync buffer. Audio has a 20–40 ms jitter buffer and nothing more.
• You can see where time goes. Both apps show frame rate, bitrate, round trip and queue depth, so you can tell when your Wi-Fi is the bottleneck and not Camlane.

On a 5 GHz network, glass-to-glass delay is typically 30–80 ms. Call apps add their own 50–100 ms on top, the same as with any webcam.

What your apps see

Computer	Camera	Microphone
Linux	Camlane Camera through v4l2loopback; with several phones, also one camera per phone	Camlane Microphone, created automatically on PipeWire or PulseAudio
Windows 10 and 11	OBS Virtual Camera, through the driver OBS Studio installs (experimental)	Through VB-Cable: pick CABLE Output
macOS 13+ (beta)	Not yet: preview and remote control work, the virtual camera is coming	Through BlackHole: pick BlackHole 2ch

The phone’s picture keeps its controls and effects: background blur, filters and colour grades are applied on the phone before encoding, so they look the same in every app, including ones without effects of their own.

Connecting

• Found automatically. The phone finds computers running Camlane on the same Wi-Fi (mDNS, with a UDP probe for networks that block multicast).
• Or by QR code or address. Scan the QR code the desktop shows, or type its IP address.
• A PIN once. The desktop shows a 6-digit PIN. The phone proves it knows the PIN without sending it, then both sides keep a pairing token so later connections are silent. See Security.
• Through firewalls. If the computer’s firewall blocks the phone, the computer calls the phone instead, usually within a second, with nothing to set up. The firewall guide shows how to open it properly.
• No internet needed. A home router, an office network without client isolation, or a hotspot from the phone or the computer all work. Video and audio never leave that network.

Settings that matter

Use	Resolution	Bitrate	Audio
Calls in Zoom, Meet or Teams	1080p30	6–8 Mbit/s	Opus on busy Wi-Fi, PCM otherwise
Streaming in OBS	1080p60 on 5 GHz	10–14 Mbit/s	PCM (“studio”)
Detail, documents, product shots	4K30	20–30 Mbit/s	Your main microphone

Resolution, frame rate and bitrate change live from either side. The phone offers only the modes its camera and encoder support.

Screen off, phone in a drawer

Camlane keeps streaming with the screen off, through a foreground service with a visible notification. Some phone makers stop background apps anyway; the Android setup guide lists the battery settings to change for Xiaomi, Samsung, OnePlus, Huawei and Pixel. Plug the phone in for long sessions: 1080p60 with effects uses 3–6 W, and phones slow their encoder when hot.