Testers
Webcam Test (Camera Test)
Test your webcam with a live preview in the browser, and see the resolution and frame rate your camera is really sending. Nothing is uploaded.
Live camera preview
Your browser will ask for camera permission when you press this. Nothing happens before then.
Nothing is recorded and nothing is uploaded. The picture stays in this tab and this page never asks for your microphone.
Press Start camera and your browser opens the camera for this tab and nothing else. You get a live self-view at the top of the page, the two figures the camera reports about itself underneath it, and a picker when there is more than one camera attached. Nothing is recorded, nothing is uploaded, and the stream ends the moment you press Stop or leave the page — the light beside your lens going out is the confirmation of that, and it is the one part of this that no web page can fake.
Webcam resolution test
The figure reads what the camera chose, not what this page asked for. The
request deliberately carries no width, no height and no frame rate, so
1280 × 720 under the preview means the camera picked that mode on its own —
it is an observation rather than a setting echoed back at you, which is what
makes it worth reading. The sub-line names the mode where the numbers have a
familiar name, and the shape beside it: 720p · 16:9, or 4:3 for the squarer
picture most older built-in cameras still produce.
A number lower than the box your camera came in advertised is normal and rarely a fault. Cameras negotiate downwards for a dim room, for a USB port shared with other devices, or because a driver defaults to a modest mode until an application asks for more. If the shape looks wrong — a 4:3 picture where you expected a widescreen one — that is the camera's native sensor shape showing through, and the preview letterboxes it rather than cropping, because someone checking their framing needs to see the whole frame the camera is sending.
Webcam frame rate test
The second figure is the rate the camera reports, rounded to a whole number. Thirty is the usual answer; fifteen or twenty is common on a laptop camera in poor light, because sensors buy exposure time by slowing down. Some browsers report nothing at all for some devices, and the figure says so plainly rather than inventing a value.
A reported 0 fps is the most useful reading this page can give you, and it is not the same thing as no reading. It means the camera answered the question and the answer was that it is sending nothing. Beside a preview that looks live, that is the signature of a virtual camera whose application has been closed, or of a driver that has stopped without telling the operating system. Pick a different entry in the camera list, or restart the software that owns the virtual one.
When the picture is black
Work through these in order, because the first two account for most of it:
- A privacy shutter or a piece of tape over the lens. Check the physical bezel, not the software.
- The camera pointing somewhere useless — into a closed laptop lid, at a desk, or at the wall behind an external monitor. Docked laptops with the lid shut are the classic version of this, since the built-in camera is still listed and still works while facing the inside of the machine.
- A dark room. If the frame is grey-black rather than absolute black, the camera is working and the lighting is the problem.
- The light beside the lens is off while this page shows LIVE. That mismatch means the operating system handed over a camera that is not actually running, which is the virtual-camera case above.
Testing a laptop camera against a USB one
When a laptop has both a built-in camera and something plugged in, the picker appears once the first stream opens — device names are hidden until then, so a list offered any earlier would read "camera 1, camera 2" and be no help. Switch between the entries and watch the resolution figure change with them: an external camera almost always reports a larger picture than the panel-mounted one, and that difference is the quickest way to confirm your call application is using the camera you think it is.
Which one a call application picks is its own decision, made in its own settings, and it will often keep choosing the built-in camera long after you have plugged a better one in. Testing here tells you the hardware and the operating system are both fine, which narrows the fault to that one dropdown.
Framing and light
Since you are looking at yourself anyway, two adjustments are worth the thirty seconds. Raise the camera to eye level — a laptop on a desk shoots upwards, and nobody looks their best from below — and put your main light source in front of you rather than behind. A window at your back turns you into a silhouette that no camera setting can rescue, while the same window in front of you does more for the picture than any resolution the figures above will ever report.
The mirrored preview is on by default because that is what every call application shows you of yourself. Switch it to true orientation when you need to read text off a shirt, a badge or a box you are holding up; the choice changes only what you see here, never what a call receives.
Questions
- Why is my webcam picture black even though the browser says the camera is on?
- A black picture from a stream the browser considers healthy is almost always something in front of the lens, or something standing in for the lens. Start with the physical shutter: many laptops and most standalone monitors have a sliding cover milled into the bezel, and a strip of tape over the lens does the same job just as well. Then look at what the camera is aimed at — a laptop propped shut behind an external monitor, or a clip-on camera that has rotated to face the desk, both produce a perfectly functional black frame. If what you see is dark rather than truly black, the room is under-lit and the camera is fine. The remaining case is the one the frame rate figure catches: a virtual camera whose source application is closed will still hand the browser a valid stream, and it usually reports zero frames while doing it.
- Can I test my webcam while Zoom or Teams is running?
- Usually not, and it is worth knowing that before you conclude the camera is faulty. On Windows a camera is generally single-holder — whichever program opens it first keeps it until it releases it — so a call application minimised or parked in the notification area will make this page report that another app has your camera, even though nothing appears to be using it. Quit those programs rather than closing their windows, since several of them keep running afterwards, and remember that another tab of this same browser counts as another program. macOS is more relaxed and will often hand the same camera to two applications at once, so a Mac that fails this way usually has a system privacy setting or a driver at fault rather than a busy device.
- Does this webcam test record or save any video?
- No, and there is nothing in the page that could. There is no capture button, no snapshot, no download and no upload; the tool never reads a single frame out of the video element, so no image of you exists anywhere for it to keep, even briefly in memory. When you press Stop, or close the tab, the stream ends and the camera light goes out. People do search for a webcam test that records a clip and plays it back, and the honest answer is that a live preview already answers the same question — you can see yourself while you adjust the angle, which a recording only lets you check afterwards. If you genuinely need a file, the Camera app that ships with Windows and macOS will make one.
- Can this page test my webcam microphone too?
- It cannot, deliberately. Every request this page makes has audio switched off, so your microphone is never opened and the browser never asks for it — a camera test that also demands the microphone gets refused by people who would happily have allowed the camera on its own. Many webcams do have a microphone built into the housing, and it appears to your operating system as a separate audio input with the camera's name on it. To check that one, run the [mic test](/mic-test) afterwards and pick the webcam's entry in its device list. Running the two tests in sequence takes under a minute and covers both halves of what a call needs.
- Why does my camera list show OBS Virtual Camera, Snap Camera or a name I do not recognise?
- Those are software cameras. OBS, Snap Camera, ManyCam, several vendor effects drivers and the background-blur features built into some call applications all register themselves as ordinary video inputs, and nothing in the browser API distinguishes them from a physical device — they have a name, an id and a stream, exactly like the camera above your screen. That is why this page lists whatever the operating system offers rather than trying to filter the list: any name-matching rule would eventually mislabel real hardware from a vendor whose product happened to collide. If a name in the picker is not a camera you own, select the one that is. A virtual camera whose application is not running is also the commonest source of a stream that opens successfully and then shows nothing.
- What resolution and frame rate does a webcam need for video calls?
- Less than most people expect. Every mainstream call platform re-encodes your picture to fit the bandwidth available and the size of the tile you occupy on other people's screens, and a participant in a gallery view of twelve is often being shown at a few hundred pixels wide regardless of what the camera sent. A camera reporting 1280 × 720 at 30 fps has more than enough of both, and 640 × 480 at 15 fps is still perfectly watchable for a conversation. Lighting makes a far larger visible difference than either number: the same camera in a well-lit room and a dim one produces pictures that look like different hardware, because sensors drop their frame rate and raise their gain to cope with the dark.