How to turn off my ubuntu web camera?

Question

I was using facebook messenger, and When I finished my call, the web cam stilled working.I have an integrated camera in my laptop HP 630. Is there a way to turn it off ? Thanks.

@NeoTheThird shameless plug, but this most probably readily available and thus cheaper: http://askubuntu.com/a/779909/75166 — MadMike, Mar 27 '17 at 13:15

score 15 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 27 '17 at 13:09

15

Thank you guys, the problem is gone.

- I used the command : lsof | grep video0 to find the software using my webcam. It was FireFox.

- I just restarted FireFox, and then the webcam turned off.

answered Mar 27 '17 at 13:09

Amine Soumiaa

321

5

Just run lsof /dev/video0. That's often much faster than running lsof on all files – smac89 Jun 02 '20 at 04:58

score 10 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 25 '17 at 15:09

If the webcam behaves weirdly, not automatically turning off for example, you can:

To disable the webcam run:

sudo modprobe -r uvcvideo

It removes the module from the Linux Kernel.

To re-enable the webcam you can either restart or run:

sudo modprobe -a uvcvideo

Reinserts the module.

score 3 · Answer 3 · edited Oct 04 '20 at 15:56

3

sudo rmmod -f uvcvideo(to kill laptop camera)
sudo modprobe -r uvcvideo(to restart the video module)
sudo modprobe uvcvideo(to restart the laptop camera)
sudo modprobe -a uvcvideo(can be used while skipping steps 2&3 to restart the camera directly)

edited Oct 04 '20 at 15:56

Kevin Bowen

19,615
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answered Oct 04 '20 at 13:07

vishwachandra

31
1

lsmod | grep uvcvideo (to check if camera killed or alive) – Rolas Dec 02 '20 at 07:10

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered May 09 '20 at 19:21

1

If you know the application name, you can use the following to get the process ID:

ps -fA | grep application_name
Output: process_name PID PPID .....

Then you can kill the process using:

kill -9 PID

answered May 09 '20 at 19:21

Satya Prakash

11

How to turn off my ubuntu web camera?

4 Answers4

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