Webcam Test — Check Your Camera Online

How to test your webcam

1. Press “Start Camera”

   Nothing is captured until you press the button.

2. Choose Allow in the browser prompt

   Camera access is blocked by default. If you blocked it before, click the padlock in the address bar and reset the permission.

3. Check the live preview

   If you can see yourself, the camera, cable and driver all work. Wave a hand to confirm the image is live rather than frozen.

4. Read the resolution and frame rate

   The table below the preview shows what your camera is actually delivering right now, which is often lower than the box claims.

5. Take a snapshot

   A still frame makes it easy to judge focus, exposure and colour without the motion distracting you.

What to look for in the preview

A camera that produces an image is not automatically a camera that looks good on a call. Once you can see yourself, judge four things in order.

Exposure. If your face is dark and the window behind you is blown out, the camera is metering for the brightest part of the frame. Turn to face your light source instead of sitting with your back to it. This single change improves a call more than any camera upgrade.

Focus. Most webcams are fixed-focus and sharp from roughly 40 cm to infinity. If you are soft, you are probably too close. Cameras with autofocus can hunt back and forth in low light, which is distracting; many allow focus to be locked in their own software.

Frame rate. Watch the number in the table while you wave. A drop to 15 fps or below makes movement look stuttery, and in almost every case the cause is dim light rather than a slow computer — the sensor holds each frame open longer to gather light.

Colour. Mixed lighting confuses automatic white balance. A room lit by both a warm bulb and daylight from a window often produces an orange or blue cast on skin. Turning off one of the two sources usually fixes it instantly.

Why the resolution is often lower than the box says

A webcam advertised as 1080p will happily report 1280×720 or even 640×480 in this test, and that is usually not a fault. Three things cause it. Browsers negotiate a resolution rather than demanding one, and they favour a stable frame rate over pixel count. Low light pushes the camera into a mode that trades resolution for sensitivity. And on laptops, power-saving profiles cap the sensor when running on battery.

If you need the full resolution, plug the laptop in, brighten the room, close other apps that might be sharing the camera, and try again. If it still caps out, check the manufacturer's utility — some cameras only reach their maximum in their own software.

Privacy shutters, indicator lights and stuck streams

Many modern laptops ship with a physical privacy shutter, a small slider above the lens. It is the single most common reason a "broken" webcam turns out to be fine. Check it before anything else.

The indicator light next to the lens is wired to the camera's power on most machines, which means it is a reliable signal: if the light is on, something is using the camera. If the light stays on after you press stop here, another application is still holding the stream. Only one application can usually own a camera at a time, which is why starting a Zoom call while OBS is running often produces a black preview.

Testing a camera before an interview or exam

Run this test in the same room, at the same time of day, and on the same power state you will use for the real thing. Lighting changes across the day more than people expect, and a laptop that looks fine plugged in can drop frame rate on battery. Take a snapshot and look at it as the other person will see it — that framing check catches more problems than watching the live preview, where your eye keeps drifting back to your own face.