Android 14 may introduce the ability to use your phone as a webcam for your Windows or Mac PC

I was personally not aware of this, but apparently, you can use your Android phone as a webcam for your Windows or Mac PC. Color me surprised, though I suppose I shouldn’t be – the technology is capable. I simply never thought to use my phone as a camera for the computer because I’ve always had this built into my devices.

Anyway, it’s not always great trying to sift through which apps you can trust and which ones are asking for a subscription to make the connection between your handset and your desktop. According to Mishaal Rahman on Twitter, Google is working this very functionality into Android 14. That’s right, you may soon be able to use your Android phone as a PC webcam without the need for any third-party apps!

By adding the ‘DeviceAsWebcam’ service to Android, Google will allow you to connect your phone to the computer via USB and send video data from the source to the destination. Android has supported USB webcams for quite some time already (plugging USB webcams into your Android device to overtake the standard inbuilt camera), but this will seek to implement the opposite type of connection. Ideally, this process will be plug-and-play and have virtually zero complexity for the end user.

Google is no doubt looking to push Android further in 2023 by adding new and useful tools, and the immediate beneficiaries of such updates will probably be Pixel users via exclusive or timed exclusive features. This is just my thought though, and the company has in no way stated this yet.

Would you prefer to use your phone as a webcam and connect it to your PC via USB, docking it above your display with a phone mount, or are you going to stick with traditional external peripherals? Logitech HD cameras aren’t terribly expensive, but I can see how having this on the go would work in situations where a webcam just isn’t within reach or an individual’s budget.