Use an Android phone as a webcam on macOS. One Flutter codebase, two roles: the phone captures and sends, the Mac receives and displays.
The Mac app with the phone's camera arriving. Virtual camera · streaming means
it is being served to every app on the system as a camera called BeamCam.
The phone's home screen. Saved computers first, anything else found on the network below, and the QR code or a typed address as the fallback.
While streaming, the phone keeps the controls: camera, quality, framing, mirror and flip, all applied without dropping the call.
Every open-source Android→webcam project on macOS routes video through OBS. droidcam-obs-plugin is an OBS plugin with a closed-source phone app. RemoteCam is MJPEG-over-HTTP into an OBS media source. Mobile-Webcam ships a real virtual camera but only on Windows. Iriun and Camo do the whole job natively and are both closed source.
Nothing open-source delivers Android → native macOS virtual camera.
Note this is deliberately Android-only. macOS has shipped Continuity Camera since macOS 13, so an iPhone already does this natively and better. Android is the case Apple will not serve.
| Stage | What it does | State |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Phone captures, Mac receives and renders over WebRTC | working |
| 2 | CoreMediaIO extension so Meet/Brave list it directly | installed and enabled |
| 3 | Background capture, pinned rotation | working |
| 4 | Frame bridge: received video → extension sink stream | working |
| 5 | Torch/zoom/focus, bitrate tuning | not started |
system_profiler SPCameraDataType lists BeamCam as a capture device and it
serves the phone's live feed at 1280×720/30fps. The placeholder (dark frame,
moving blue bar) now appears only when no frame has arrived for 2 seconds — i.e.
when the phone is disconnected.
CMIOObjectSetPropertyData(kCMIOObjectSystemObject,
kCMIOHardwarePropertyAllowScreenCaptureDevices = 1)Android (sender) macOS (receiver)
──────────────── ────────────────
getUserMedia HttpServer :8787
│ │
RotationPinner (native) WebSocket /ws
│ │
RTCPeerConnection ──── offer ───────────▶ │
│ ◀─── answer ───────── │
│ ◀──▶ ICE trickle ────▶ │
│ │
└──── SRTP video, direct over LAN ───▶ RTCVideoRenderer
The phone is always the offerer since it owns the media. The Mac adds a
RecvOnly transceiver and answers. iceServers is empty on purpose: both peers
are on one subnet, so host candidates pair immediately and STUN would only add
gathering latency.
| File | Role |
|---|---|
lib/signaling.dart |
Wire format, port, ICE config — shared by both ends |
lib/sender_page.dart |
Android: camera, framing, quality, background toggle |
lib/receiver_page.dart |
macOS: signaling server, answer, extension install UI |
android/.../RotationPinner.kt |
Freezes the outgoing rotation tag |
android/.../BeamCamService.kt |
Opt-in foreground service for background capture |
macos/CameraExtension/ |
CoreMediaIO provider, device, source + sink streams |
macos/add_camera_extension.rb |
Recreates the extension target in the Xcode project |
- iOS sender. Worth a lot against a Windows receiver.
- Windows receiver. Needs a Media Foundation camera; CoreMediaIO is Apple-only.
- More quality options. 1440p, and a manual bitrate override.
- Microphone relaying. Needs a virtual audio device, separate from the camera.
GPL-3.0. See LICENSE.
Use it however you like — the licence only has anything to say when you distribute. Ship a modified version to anyone else and you have to ship its source too, under the same licence. That is deliberate: the point is that the CoreMediaIO work here cannot be quietly absorbed into a closed product.
Contributions are accepted under GPL-3.0 plus a maintainer relicensing grant, so that app-store distribution — which GPL-3.0 terms forbid — stays possible for the project's own releases. That grant is to the maintainer alone and extends to nobody else. See CONTRIBUTING.md.