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.

Solution 1

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.

Solution 2

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.

Solution 3

1. sudo rmmod -f uvcvideo(to kill laptop camera)

2. sudo modprobe -r uvcvideo(to restart the video module)

3. sudo modprobe uvcvideo(to restart the laptop camera)

4. sudo modprobe -a uvcvideo(can be used while skipping steps 2&3 to restart the camera directly)

Solution 4

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

View more solutions

Comments

[wjandrea]

It might just be glitched. Have you tried restarting?

[MadMike]

@NeoTheThird shameless plug, but this most probably readily available and thus cheaper: askubuntu.com/a/779909/75166

[Amine Soumiaa]

the problem is solved, but I am using it :xD

[smac89]

Just run lsof /dev/video0. That's often much faster than running lsof on all files

[Rolas]

lsmod | grep uvcvideo (to check if camera killed or alive)