Your Android phone as a Windows webcam.
USB or Wi-Fi, one button. No app on the phone, no OBS, no watermarks.
A free, open-source alternative to DroidCam, Iriun and iVCam.
English · Русский · Deutsch · Español · Français · Português · 简体中文 · 日本語
- Nothing to install on the phone. Plugcam talks to the phone over USB debugging and runs the camera part of scrcpy on it for as long as you stream.
- USB or Wi-Fi. Pair the phone once by QR code or a six-digit code, or move a phone on the cable to Wi-Fi with one click. After that it connects by itself whenever it is on the network, and if the network drops for a moment, Plugcam reconnects while apps keep the last picture.
- A real webcam for Windows. "Plugcam Camera" shows up next to your other cameras in desktop apps and browsers that use DirectShow: Zoom, Discord, Telegram Desktop, OBS, Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and so web calls like Google Meet too.
- Good picture. Up to 4K if the phone's camera captures it, at 30 fps, or 60 fps on phones that support it. The phone encodes H.264 in hardware and the PC's graphics chip decodes it, so your PC barely notices.
- All the controls you'd expect. Back or front camera and each lens, zoom with 1×/2×/5× presets, flashlight, rotation for a phone standing upright, mirror, and brightness, contrast, saturation and warmth.
- Free for good. No watermarks, no time limits, no account, no telemetry. Apache-2.0.
- Light. A 7.2 MB download. Waiting in the tray it takes 7 MB of memory; streaming from there, under 1% of the CPU. Updates install themselves with one click.
- Speaks your language. English, Deutsch, Español, Français, Italiano, Polski, Português, Türkçe, Українська, Русский, 日本語, 한국어, 简体中文.
The apps people usually try first, as of September 2026. Free tiers change often, so each name links to the vendor's own page.
| Plugcam | DroidCam | Iriun | iVCam | Camo | Phone Link | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| App on the phone | none | yes | yes | yes | yes | Link to Windows |
| Free picture | up to 4K, 30 or 60 fps | 640×480; HD has a watermark | up to 4K, with a watermark | watermark; 640×480 after the trial | up to 720p | 720p |
| Ads | none | yes | yes | yes | none | none |
| Connection | USB, Wi-Fi | USB, Wi-Fi | USB, Wi-Fi | USB, Wi-Fi | USB, Wi-Fi | Wi-Fi + Bluetooth |
| Open source | yes, Apache-2.0 | PC client only | no | no | no | no |
| Windows download | 7.2 MB | 98 MB | 8.8 MB, needs .NET Desktop Runtime | about 43 MB | about 475 MB | built into Windows 11 |
Two app-free options you may already have: phones with Android 14 or newer can act as a USB webcam on their own if the maker turned that mode on (Pixels do), and scrcpy, which Plugcam builds on, shows the camera in a window (on Windows you need OBS to turn that window into a webcam). What Plugcam still lacks next to the paid apps: sound.
Of these, only Plugcam gives Windows a webcam with nothing installed on the phone and no OBS in between. The others have things Plugcam doesn't: older Android versions, or (BestCam) a camera that Microsoft Store apps can see. scrcpy, which Plugcam builds on, is a command-line tool; Plugcam puts its camera mode into an app with a preview and controls. Checked against each project's README in September 2026.
| Plugcam | VCamdroid | Android Webcam Project | BestCam (alpha) | scrcpy | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| App on the phone | none | yes | yes | yes | none |
| Webcam on Windows | yes, DirectShow | yes, DirectShow | yes | yes, Media Foundation (Windows 11 22H2+) | through OBS or another window-capture tool; a webcam on Linux |
| Connection | USB, Wi-Fi | USB, Wi-Fi | USB, Wi-Fi | USB | USB, Wi-Fi |
| Android | 12+ | 7.0+ | 8.0+ | 8.0+ | 12+ for the camera |
| On the PC | app with a preview, controls and a first-run guide | app | app | Python script; app announced | command line; the window shows only the video |
| Install | installer or portable zip; updates itself | zip, then install.bat as administrator | installer | zip, no installer | zip or winget |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT | GPL-3.0 | GPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
Plugcam is a native Rust app with a small C++ virtual camera. The window is drawn by the WebView2 that comes with Windows (through Tauri), so there is no bundled Chromium as in Electron apps. The video itself never goes through the web page: decoding (Windows' own H.264 decoder, on the graphics chip), rotating, scaling, color adjustments and handing frames to the camera all happen in Rust, and the window only gets a small preview while it is open. The WebView draws without the graphics chip, which saves about 80 MB for a window this simple. Closed to the tray, Plugcam shuts the WebView down completely, so a camera streaming in the background takes under 1% of the CPU.
Measured on a Ryzen 7 8845HS laptop with Windows 11, counting Plugcam and all its WebView2
processes, averaged over a minute with scripts/measure.ps1:
| Memory | CPU | |
|---|---|---|
| In the tray | 7 MB | 0% |
| Window open, camera off | 83 MB | 0% |
| Streaming 1080p30, in the tray | 99 MB | 0.6% |
| Streaming 1080p30, window open with preview | 204 MB | 4.4% |
Memory is what the Memory column of Task Manager shows (the private working set), so you can compare with any other app there. CPU is the share of all 16 threads of the 8-core processor, as in Task Manager too. Streaming was measured with a OnePlus 11R at 1080p, 30 fps. The picture is decoded on the Radeon 780M built into the processor; its video memory is ordinary RAM, so the decoder's frame buffers count in the memory column.
adb, which Plugcam talks to the phone through, adds about 2 MB; it is shared with any other Android tool you run.
- Install. Download
Plugcam_x.y.z_x64-setup.exefrom the latest release and run it. Windows asks for administrator rights once, to register the camera. Plugcam then shows up in the Start menu. Prefer not to install? TakePlugcam_x.y.z_x64-portable.zip, extract it anywhere and runPlugcam.exe; it asks for administrator rights once on the first start, to add the camera. - Turn on USB debugging on the phone: Settings → About phone, tap Build number seven times, then Settings → System → Developer options → USB debugging. Plugcam's first-run guide walks you through it.
- Plug in the phone, tap Allow on it, and press Turn camera on. In your video app, pick Plugcam Camera.
- Want it without the cable? Open Phones and Wi-Fi in the side panel and pair the phone by QR code or pairing code (Developer options → Wireless debugging), or press From cable while it is still plugged in. The phone and the PC need to be on the same network.
The installer is not code-signed yet, so SmartScreen may say "Windows protected your PC". Click
More info → Run anyway, or check the file against the .sha256 next to it in the release.
Updates come by themselves. Plugcam looks for a new version once a day; when there is one, an Update button appears. One click downloads it, checks its signature, installs it and restarts Plugcam, which then shows what changed. Both the installed and the portable version update this way, and you can turn the daily check off in Settings.
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| Dark theme follows Windows | Settings |
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| First-run guide | Settings, dark theme |
- Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit.
- An Android phone with Android 12 or newer (camera capture needs it), and a USB cable that carries data or the same Wi-Fi network as the PC.
- On most PCs the phone's USB driver comes with Windows Update. If the phone is not found, install the Google USB driver or your phone maker's driver.
Yes, that is what Plugcam does. It starts the camera part of scrcpy on the phone over USB debugging while you stream, and removes it when you stop. No APK is installed, and the phone doesn't need root, only Android 12 or newer. Phones with Android 14 or newer may also have a built-in USB webcam mode, if the maker turned it on (Pixels do).
Plugcam is one. It is open source under Apache-2.0 and gives up to 4K at 30 fps, or 60 fps on phones that support it, over USB or Wi-Fi, with no watermark, ads, time limit or account. What those apps have and Plugcam doesn't yet: sound. See How it compares.
Desktop apps and browsers that use DirectShow cameras: Zoom, Discord, Telegram Desktop, OBS, Chrome, Edge and Firefox, so browser calls such as Google Meet work too. Apps from the Microsoft Store, like the Windows Camera app, don't see it; a Media Foundation camera for them is planned. Microsoft Teams hasn't been checked yet.
No. Plugcam registers its own camera, so desktop video apps see it directly. With plain scrcpy on Windows you would capture its window in OBS and start OBS's virtual camera.
Yes, since version 0.2.0. Open Phones and Wi-Fi and pair the phone once by QR code or a six-digit code from Developer options → Wireless debugging, or press From cable to move a phone that is on the cable to Wi-Fi. Paired phones connect by themselves when they show up on the network. Over Wi-Fi the picture never falls more than about half a second behind: Plugcam skips ahead instead of letting the delay pile up, and lowers the bit rate if the network can't keep up.
No, Plugcam sends only the picture. Use your PC's microphone or headset.
No, Plugcam needs an Android phone and Windows. On Linux, scrcpy itself can turn the phone into a
webcam: load the v4l2loopback module and run
scrcpy --video-source=camera --v4l2-sink=/dev/videoN --no-video-playback. On a Mac with an
iPhone, Continuity Camera is built in.
Plugcam needs Android 12 or newer, because scrcpy can capture the camera only from Android 12 on. It was built and tested with a OnePlus 11R (Android 15) and Chrome; other phones should work the same way. Some phones list lenses they won't stream from a third-party app; Plugcam notices, hides that lens and switches to the main camera. If your phone or app doesn't work, please open an issue with the phone model and the app. In Plugcam, Settings → Diagnostics → Save report makes a file to attach to it.
phone camera ─▶ scrcpy-server ─▶ adb, USB/Wi-Fi ─▶ Plugcam ─▶ "Plugcam Camera" ─▶ Zoom, OBS, …
(H.264 in the (TCP tunnel) (Media Foundation (DirectShow
phone's encoder) decoder → frames) filter, Softcam)
Plugcam pushes scrcpy-server 4.1 (pinned by checksum) to the phone, starts it through adb and
reads its video stream. Windows' built-in H.264 decoder turns the stream into pictures, which are
rotated, scaled and mirrored as needed and handed to the virtual camera. When you stop, the server
exits and removes itself from the phone.
The app is written in Rust with Tauri and Svelte. The virtual camera is a fork of Softcam.
You need Rust (stable), Node.js 24 with pnpm, Visual Studio 2022 or newer with the C++ desktop workload, and adb (Android platform-tools) on PATH.
pnpm install
.\scripts\vcam-build.ps1 # builds plugcam_cam.dll (x64 and x86)
.\scripts\vcam-register.ps1 # registers the dev build as "Plugcam Camera" (asks for admin)
pnpm tauri dev # runs the appTo build the installer: .\scripts\stage-resources.ps1 (copies adb and the camera DLL into
src-tauri\resources), then pnpm tauri build; .\scripts\portable.ps1 packs the portable zip
from that build. Tests: cargo test in src-tauri. Releases are built by
.github/workflows/release.yml when a v* tag is pushed.
The design notes (in Russian) are in docs/SPEC.md.
Plugcam has no servers and sends nothing anywhere. The video goes from the phone to your PC over
the cable or your local network and stays there. The only thing it fetches from the internet is the list of releases on
GitHub, once a day, to see whether there is an update (turn it off in Settings). Settings are a
JSON file in %APPDATA%\io.github.plugcam, or in the data folder of the portable version.
Apache-2.0. Plugcam ships scrcpy-server (Apache-2.0), adb from Android platform-tools, and a fork of Softcam (MIT); see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.