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.

Answer 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.

Answer 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.

Answer 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)

Answer 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

Answer 5

I found an easy solution... It happens if you have configured your sound input for the webcam mic. Change it to another and the light turns off.