Skip to the webcam test

Webcam Test

Video never leaves your device

See what your camera is really sending — resolution, frame rate and a plain-English verdict when something is wrong. Nothing is uploaded and nothing is recorded.

Your camera is off. Press Start camera test and your browser will ask for permission. The picture appears here, and the check takes about three seconds.

Your snapshot — full resolution, still on your device
The still frame captured from your camera
1 Camera

Your browser only reveals camera names after you have allowed access once, so this list fills in properly after the first run.

2 Quality to ask for

Asking for 1080p is a request, not a demand — a camera that cannot manage it hands back the closest it has instead of failing, and the result tells you which you got.

Working…
Advanced options

Checking usage…

Step by step

How to test your webcam

About ten seconds, no account, no app, and an answer at the end rather than a picture and a shrug.

Press Start

Nothing happens until you do. The camera is not opened when the page loads, and your browser will not ask for permission until you have asked it to.

Choose Allow

Your browser asks once. If you have blocked the camera here before, the prompt will not reappear on its own — the verdict tells you where to switch it back on.

Let it measure

Three seconds of watching the picture: the resolution and frame rate you are really getting, how bright it is, whether it is in focus, and whether it is moving at all.

Read the verdict

Working normally, or a named fault with what to do about it. Take a full-resolution snapshot if you want to check detail properly — it stays on your device.

Private by design

Your camera, your device, your video

A webcam test has to look through your camera — there is no way around that, and any page claiming otherwise is not testing anything. What it does not have to do is send the picture anywhere, and this one does not. The video goes to the preview on this page and to a tiny analysis canvas, both inside this tab, and then it is gone.

Nothing is uploaded

No frame of your video is ever sent to us or to anyone else. There is no server involved in the test at all — the code that measures the picture has no way to transmit it, which is a stronger guarantee than a promise not to.

Nothing is recorded

Frames are measured and discarded as they arrive; none is kept, not even in memory. The only image that ever persists is a snapshot you take yourself, and that goes straight to your downloads folder.

The camera is released

When the test finishes, when you press Stop, and when you close the tab, the camera is switched off properly rather than left held. Watch the indicator light next to your camera — it should go out, and if it ever does not, that is a bug we want to hear about.

To be precise about what does leave your device — because this is the one tool here that asks for a permission, and that deserves an exact answer rather than a slogan. Two things, and neither of them is your video:

1. When a test finishes, this page sends one anonymous message to our counter saying “webcam-test was used”. Not the verdict, not your camera’s name, not its resolution. It exists so the usage number in the panel is a real one rather than something we invented.
2. Google Analytics records the page view and the verdict’s short code — ok, in-use, black. That is a fact about a piece of hardware, and it is how we tell whether this page is diagnosing anything useful. You can block it and the tool works exactly the same.

And the honest limit: we can tell you what your camera is sending to this browser. We cannot tell you how it looks to the person at the other end of a call, because that depends on their software, their screen and the connection in between. A camera that passes here and still looks bad on a call is usually the call software compressing it, not the camera.

At a glance

Tool specifications

What it checksDelivered resolution, measured frame rate, brightness, focus, whether the picture is moving, and which camera is actually selected
Faults it namesPermission blocked, no camera found, camera held by another app, completely black picture, frozen stream, very dark picture, very soft picture, dropped frames, resolution below what the camera can do
Permission neededCamera. Requested only when you press Start — never on page load
MicrophoneNot used, and never requested
Measurement windowAbout 3 seconds, sampled 5 times a second
SnapshotOptional, full camera resolution, PNG, saved only if you press the button
“Capable of” rowShown where the browser reports camera capabilities. Hidden rather than guessed at where it does not — Firefox currently does not
Where processing happensIn your browser, on your device — no video is uploaded
Works offlineYes, once the page has loaded, including as an installed app
Sign-upNot required, not offered
PriceFree

Questions

Webcam testing, answered

Is my video recorded or uploaded?
No. The stream goes to the preview on this page and to a 64×48 analysis canvas, both inside this tab, and each frame is discarded as soon as it has been measured. Nothing is written to disk unless you press the snapshot button yourself. The simplest proof: turn off your wifi and run the whole test — it works exactly the same, because there is nowhere for the video to go.
Why does it need permission if it is private?
Because a webcam test has to look through your webcam. The permission is how your browser makes that visible to you rather than letting it happen quietly — it is the protection working, not a hole in it. The permission grants this page access to the camera; it does not grant anybody access to the video, and what happens to the frames after that is what the section above describes.
It says another app is using my camera. Which one?
The browser will not say, and cannot — it only learns that the device is unavailable, not who has it. In practice it is almost always Zoom, Teams, Meet, Skype or OBS, including when they are minimised to the system tray rather than visibly open, and including another browser tab with a call in it. On Windows only one application can hold a camera at a time, which is why this is the most common webcam fault there is. Close them and press Start again; if nothing obvious is running, signing out and back in clears a camera left locked by an app that crashed.
My camera works in Zoom but not here. Why?
Usually because Zoom is still holding it. Desktop apps keep the camera open while they are running, so the browser cannot have it. Quit the app completely — not just the meeting window — and try again. The other common cause is a browser-level block: apps and browsers have separate camera permissions, and the operating system can allow one while refusing the other.
The preview is completely black. What does that mean?
If the camera opened but every frame is black, the first thing to check is physical: a privacy shutter, a sticker, or a laptop lid slider over the lens. This catches far more people than it sounds like it should, because the camera reports itself as working perfectly the entire time — software cannot see that something is in front of the lens. Some laptops also have a function key that disables the camera electronically. If none of those apply, a black stream from a healthy device is usually a driver problem.
Why does my 1080p camera only show 640×480?
This is the thing most webcam tests never tell you, and it is worth knowing. Cameras negotiate a resolution with whatever opens them, so if something else opened yours first at a low setting, you inherit it. Call software also drops resolution deliberately when bandwidth or CPU is tight, and some keep that setting afterwards. Where your browser reports what the camera is capable of, this page shows both numbers side by side, so a gap between them is visible rather than something you have to suspect. Close everything else, press Start, and if the delivered number jumps, you have found your answer.
Does this tell me whether my webcam is any good?
It tells you what your camera is sending and whether anything is obviously wrong with it. It does not rate image quality, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise: colour accuracy and noise depend on your lighting as much as on the sensor, and a proper judgement needs a controlled scene rather than whatever is behind you. What it can do is separate a broken camera from a badly lit room, which is the question people actually arrive with. Take a snapshot and look at it full size — that is the most honest quality check available here.
Does the snapshot get uploaded anywhere?
No. The still is drawn onto a canvas in this tab and turned into a PNG in memory; pressing Download saves it to your own device, and closing the tab discards it. It is saved unmirrored even if the preview is mirrored, because that is how the image really is — a mirrored preview is a convenience for you, not the truth about the picture.

If it turns out to be the camera

When it is the webcam, and not the lighting

If the picture is black on a second computer too, or the camera never appears at all, the test has done its job. A separate webcam also fixes the other common complaint a laptop camera cannot — the angle, because it is no longer bolted above your screen.

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Keep it handy

Save it, share it, or tell us what’s missing

Come back to it

Worth keeping for two minutes before the next interview or standup, when finding out the camera is dead while everyone waits is the worst possible time. Bookmark it, or pin it to the top of the tools list on this device.

Something not right?

If the verdict was wrong, if your camera works elsewhere but not here, or if the indicator light stayed on after the test finished, tell us — that last one especially. The form opens with the tool already filled in.

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