this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2026
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Recent Android phones support UVC, which is the same protocol used by webcams. Pixels for example support it.
^^^ this. And for older phones, if I remember correctly, I used something like this like 6 years ago: https://camo.com/camera. I'm afraid it's not open source, but it looked trustworthy at that time, and I think it worked in Linux (as a standard webcam) but I might be mistaken. Take it with caution but from there you can start searching and maybe will find better alternatives.
My phone is kinda recent and has Android 18, but it didn't work. Maybe future versions of Android will add it for all. That'd be cool!