Live view

Open any camera to watch it live.

Player controls

• Play / pause the live stream.
• Mute / unmute for cameras with audio.
• Two-way talk to speak through the camera (see below).
• Fullscreen and Picture-in-Picture to pop the video into a floating window.
• Digital zoom by scrolling or pinching, up to 5×, with a minimap. Drag to pan when zoomed in.
• Quality switches the source resolution (High, Mid, or Low Resolution).
• Open camera opens the full camera page with recordings and the timeline.

When you review recordings, the player also offers rewind, fast-forward, and playback speed. See Timeline & playback.

Detection boxes

With Detections on, the player draws a box around everything the camera currently sees, with the type, the confidence and the track number. A camera that reports a detection without saying where it is gets no box, there is nothing to draw around.

An object that has settled, a car parked in the driveway or a bin left at the kerb, keeps its box but gets a faded label and a timer counting how long it has been standing there. A settled object triggers no new events and no notifications, see stationary objects. It goes back to a normal box as soon as it moves again. On a small card the labels are left out and only the box remains.

Two-way talk

The Intercom button sends audio from your device's microphone to the camera's speaker, so you can talk through a doorbell or camera. It is available on cameras that support two-way audio, and your browser or the app asks for microphone access the first time.

Second stream overlay

Give a source a PiP Source in the camera settings (Sources tab) and the player gets a Toggle PiP button. It shows that second stream as a small overlay on the video. Click the overlay to swap the two streams.

Streaming modes

camera.ui can stream live video in a few ways. You set the mode per camera in its settings. The player also has a button to switch between WebRTC and MSE while you watch.

• Auto picks the best mode for your device and network, and is the simplest choice.
• WebRTC gives the lowest latency.
• MSE is a broadly compatible fallback.
• webrtc/tcp sends WebRTC over TCP only. Pick it in the camera settings if some networks block the ports WebRTC normally uses. It is not available from the player button.

Activity mode: Always On and Standby

Each camera has an Activity mode that controls when its stream runs, balancing responsiveness against resource use:

• Always On keeps the stream live at all times, for instant viewing.
• Standby starts the stream when you open the camera and stops it again a few seconds later. The player then shows "Stream paused to conserve resources. Click on stream to resume." Click the video to watch again.
• Activity keeps the stream running while there is activity and lets it rest otherwise.

Shortcuts

Shortcuts are controls you place on the video to jump to another camera or operate a sensor. Turn on Edit Shortcuts on the player to add them. See Shortcuts for the full feature.

More options

The options menu (the dots) toggles Zones, Heatmap and Edit Shortcuts, plus Detections on cameras that run motion or object detection. AI descriptions appears when the NVR plugin is installed. Export appears once the timeline is open, and saves the range you trim there. See Detection & AI.

Cameras with pan, tilt and zoom get their own bar at the top right of the player, with the home position, the presets saved on the camera, and the PTZ button for the on-screen controls. See PTZ & autotrack.

The camera page

Open camera (or selecting a camera from the list) opens its full page: the live player, a Recordings tab, a list to switch between Cameras, Shares for admins, and a Timeline panel for jumping through footage. The Settings cog (admins) opens the camera settings drawer, where a camera's sources, zones, PTZ, detection, and more live.

To watch several cameras at once, use Camview.