Android 14 may allow some phones to be used as webcams: report

Google supports external USB cameras in its mobile operating system, Android, since Android 4.3 Jelly Bean. This means users have been able to plug a webcam into their phone or tablet for video calling for quite some time now. Third-party apps have also allowed users to connect their device to a computer and use it as a webcam, however, Google seems to be going a step further by incorporating this feature as an inbuilt feature of Android.

Mishaal Rahman, an Android expert, recently Point Code changes submitted to AOSP Gerrit. These changes indicate that Google is working on making the mobile device work as a webcam for PCs, Macs or Chromebooks.

The new “DeviceAsWebcam” feature would allow the phone or tablet to recognize itself as a USB Video Device Class, or UVC, which is the standard used by most USB webcams, making it compatible with the majority of PC’s. desktop and laptops. This is similar to what Apple did with its Continuity Camera, which lets iPhones act as webcams for Macs.

“Note that you will still need an application/service to send video data from the camera to the /dev/video* node for the host device to play”, Rahman Remarks in one of his tweets. This app must be a system app, which means that if Google doesn’t create a generic Android-ready app, manufacturers will have to provide their own. The Camo app allows users to easily use their iOS or Android device as a webcam on a Windows or Mac computer.

Rahman adds, “The system property ‘ro.usb.uvc.enabled’ will be used to toggle UVC gadget functionality on Android devices. It is only readable by system apps, and specifically the Settings app and the USB HAL gadget will read it.

Since this has a similar name to the property used for USB mass storage mode, it is possible that the system allows users to quickly switch between PTP and MTP storage modes, USB tethering, MIDI and finally this new webcam configuration using the alert that appears when you connect your phone to a computer.