How it works
What happens under the hood
No hand-waving: here is the actual path your video takes, and the actual path it never takes.
The ten-second version
- You enable VirtualCam for a site that is asking for a camera.
- The extension answers the site’s camera request with its own generated stream.
- The site plays that stream like any webcam. Nothing about the page needs to change.
Blank Screen mode: generated on your machine
The extension renders your chosen feed — a color, an image, a short video loop, or text — onto an internal canvas and captures it as a normal video track. The site receives a perfectly ordinary camera stream; nothing is downloaded from us and nothing is sent anywhere.
Phone mode: a direct, encrypted hop
When you pair your phone, the extension and the phone page exchange connection details through our small coordination service (a QR code or a 6-digit code identifies the pair). Then the video itself travels directly from your phone to your browser over WebRTC with DTLS-SRTP encryption — the same encryption every video call uses.
The coordination service only introduces the two devices. It cannot see, store, or forward a single frame, because the frames never pass through it. When your phone disconnects, the site automatically falls back to your Blank Screen feed.
One pipeline, cloned on request
Inside the extension there is a single internal stream. Every time a page asks for the camera, it receives a fresh clone of that stream — so enabling VirtualCam on one site never leaks into another, and turning it off stops every clone at once.
Why desktop apps are not covered
A browser extension can only speak to the browser. Desktop applications like the Zoom desktop client or OBS ask the operating system for a camera, which needs a system-level virtual camera driver — a fundamentally different kind of software. We chose the browser-first scope because it is where most meetings happen, it needs no risky drivers, and it can be honest about everything it does. The short version is on download.
What we can promise
- No video is recorded, stored, or forwarded — in either mode.
- No account, no analytics cookies, no tracking in the extension itself (this website’s ads are disclosed on the privacy page).
- Settings live on your device; uninstalling removes everything.
The security page goes deeper: security and privacy design.