[HN Gopher] Open Camera is a FOSS camera app for Android
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Open Camera is a FOSS camera app for Android
Author : tetris11
Score : 185 points
Date : 2026-03-02 15:46 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (opencamera.org.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (opencamera.org.uk)
| eth0up wrote:
| I've been using open camera on android since 2019.
|
| It's far superior to anything I've seen natively installed on any
| device. It has a lot of options, which I suspect can be confusing
| to some, but they're worth familiarizing with.
|
| My favorite feature is the macro, which when coupled with the
| right UI settings produces photos that when I have printed,
| result in the person saying "wow! You took that with a phone!?".
| And I say "yeah. Open Camera. It's great, try it sometime".
|
| Highly recommend.
| butILoveLife wrote:
| What phone do you have?
|
| I havent tried Open Camera in a while, but my conclusion is
| that the phone's camera app is best.
| eth0up wrote:
| Unable to afford a Google-free phone, I strictly use Moto,
| which with a bit of adb work and a lot of disabling shitware,
| gets close to actual Android. They also have excellent glass,
| aside from doing all I require of them.
|
| I see criticism of Open Cam already, but I recommend trying
| it, with patience, and seeing what it can do. All my art
| images, all my videos, are all taken with open camera.
|
| Edit: for the macro setting, it allows fine tuning, but the
| manual focus and manual zoom functions are superb for my
| purposes.
|
| Edit2: Maybe irrelevant, but I always disable the stock
| camera and anything camera related. Not sure if that helps,
| but I know I don't want any fucking thing to do with
| shitware, so go as nuclear as possible.
| Arainach wrote:
| Dismissing the stock apps as "shitware" without bothering
| to try them or offer specific examples of areas where
| Opencam is better does not inspire confidence in your
| opinions.
|
| Full manual controls does not mean "better". I've been a
| photographer for more than 20 years using everything from
| fully-manual (no battery) film setups through modern
| mirrorless bodies. I know the tradeoffs between shutter
| speed, ISO, and aperture, I know how to manual focus.
|
| ....and most of the time I don't want any of those,
| especially on a phone, where I want a clear photo of a
| stationary object and the phone's automatic settings get it
| right the first time.
|
| If something allows full manual controls but takes two
| seconds longer to be ready to shoot it is significantly
| _worse_ as a camera for most of my use cases.
| eth0up wrote:
| I'm not asking for confidence. Folks can use their own
| critical thinking and judgement. I expressed sincerity.
| Some concur, some don't. I'm not trying and will not try
| to please everyone.
|
| The current state of software is to some, myself, deeply
| offensive and many have passionate opposition to it. If
| you are into stockware, you won't ever find me in your
| way. But you'll not bully me into not expressing my
| opinion either. Shitware defines it perfectly to the very
| type of person bothering to use Fdroid and freedom
| respecting devices.
| Arainach wrote:
| What dark patterns is the Pixel Camera app using, or what
| bad things is it doing with my data? In what way is my
| camera app infringing on my freedom? "It was written by
| company X I don't like" is not an answer - why should I
| replace my camera app specifically?
| MattTheRealOne wrote:
| One negative of the Pixel camera app is that it forces
| Google Photos as the gallery app, even if Google Photos
| is disabled or not installed on the phone. I think there
| is a third-party shim app that essentially redirects
| requests to Google Photos towards whatever gallery app is
| set as default, but that should not be necessary.
| eth0up wrote:
| @Arainach - Because the option to reply is disabled:
|
| I am not sure, as I haven't used that app. What I can
| say, which may or may not be relevant to you is as
| follows:
|
| 1) Open any Google based device and do the equivalent of
| /Settings/System/DeveloperOptions/RunningServices/GoogleP
| layServices
|
| You can peruse around just Running Services if you
| please, and see plenty there, but be sure to view Show
| Cached Processes too.
|
| Under Play Services, you will see approximately 24
| services, some reasonable, some not. Crisis Alert,
| Emergency Services, Vestiges of Contact Tracing
| rebranded, etc.
|
| Try using Google Maps without BT and WiFi scanning, and
| just pure GPS. Maps won't work.
|
| Try disabling Google Play services, or Play Store and
| watch Fdroid apps break, and the phone malfunction.
|
| 2) Go to /Settings/Apps/See All/Show System and behold a
| plethora of verified shitware, much of which cannot be
| removed even through ABD.
|
| Then ask yourself Why? Most of these services are
| unnecessary. You, presumably, purchased, rather than
| leased or rented your device. So why can you cannot
| decide what runs on it? Many do not care. I do. I get
| zero reimbursement for this data mining shitware.
|
| ...or me, I say, if they need that shitware running so
| badly, buy their own phone and stick it where ever they
| want, but not on my person. We have entered a paradigm
| where everyone thinks Because They Can, they can just do
| whatever they choose on the devices of others. And what
| happens? We get stronger and stronger devices while the
| landfills engorge with waste, so that we can support a
| metadata whorehouse on our personal devices. If you
| support that, I do not oppose _you_ , I oppose it on _my_
| system, as do others, which are the type of people I tend
| to direct such comments to.
|
| No offense was intended. A comment above drops in merely
| to say Open Cam 'kinda sucks'. I do not downvote it, nor
| do I agree. I just carry on.
| esafak wrote:
| Is it really as good as Google Camera at computational
| photography; noise reduction, night mode, deblurring, stacking,
| etc.? That would be very impressive.
| eth0up wrote:
| Depends on specific purpose and values. And it's a simple
| installation away from empirical validation.
|
| Edit: one feature I'm fond of, when posting images on the
| Internet, is disabling exif data. I don't always want to put
| my coordinates on the Internet.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Disclaimer: I last used it years ago.
|
| My experience was that while it was great with all the
| features, the photo quality simply was worse than the stock
| manufacturer app in newer phones. Only in my old Samsung
| Galaxy S5 was the quality on par.
|
| Yes, by all means, everyone should try and compare.
| tekla wrote:
| No. It actually kinda sucks.
|
| Its the same way that the Pinephone is "usable" but really,
| it sucks.
| lightedman wrote:
| It's usable but that's all I can say for it. Changing settings
| for simply adjusting ISO makes the processing of images take
| forever. I tried to use it so I could capture poorly-illuminating
| LEDs in a strip at work and ended up just using a DSLR in manual
| mode, it was much faster.
| plqbfbv wrote:
| Yeah, I agree. I've used it until 3 days ago, then after ~1y I
| got tired of taking the occasional pictures with HDR on and
| waiting 3-5 minutes for them to be processed and saved, while
| producing 3 other copies in the gallery.
|
| Quality looked amazing, but the pre-installed phone camera gets
| close enough and it's instant.
| StingyJelly wrote:
| That's a weird bug. For me it always works almost instantly
| with the exception of long exposures where it sometimes takes
| 2x the exposure time.
|
| Did you switch to Camera2 API in settings>Camera Api ?
| lightedman wrote:
| Yes, I tried every improvement and API switch suggested for
| almost a month with no change in performance unless I went
| back to default everything, which then brought processing
| performance in-line with the regular native phone app.
|
| And the Long Exposure was the primary thing I wanted it to
| work for.
| shlip wrote:
| Well of course a DSLR will be better than a phone camera for
| most things, since you can control more features. That's also
| the point of OpenCamera; get as much controls as you can back,
| compared to the stock app that might be lacking. It wont do
| miracles if your phone camera is not good to begin with.
|
| I've found OpenCam to be useful because of the various optional
| features ( onionskin, levelmeter, locking settings ). You can
| also set the bitrate/size/duration of videos, etc. Lots of
| useful stuff.
| nh23423fefe wrote:
| I'm gonna give this a try. I have a samsung and the camera app
| has glitchy slow motion for years. I would never buy another one
| again, but if i can get functioning slow motion then i can still
| use it at least for side projects
| lightedman wrote:
| The problem with the slow motion isn't the software, it's the
| phone.
|
| Source: I have a Samsung phone. Any software trying to take
| slow-motion video glitches out. The camera also tends to make
| the phone overheat.
| afewquarks wrote:
| It depends on the phone camera API. Some allow up to some fps
| and the highest option is available through some vendor API
| that's not public. At least on mine.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| Which camera brands / models don't phone home or have "smart" ai
| features built in provided over a proprietary cloud app?
| tiagod wrote:
| Google Pixel with GrapheneOS
| drnick1 wrote:
| This is the correct answer. Anything proprietary phones home
| and inserts malicious metadata into pictures that allow
| others (social media) to know who, when and how the photo was
| taken.
| armadyl wrote:
| You can even use the proprietary Pixel Camera on GrapheneOS
| and just deny network permissions, or if you're worried about
| IPC (if you have another networked Google app installed) it
| can be in its own private space. And then just strip the exif
| data if you want before sending it anywhere.
| XorNot wrote:
| Funnily enough I use this just to have a camera which saves to a
| different directory for keeping RealityScan images apart from my
| general photos.
| seanw444 wrote:
| That really should be a standard setting for camera apps.
| yonatan8070 wrote:
| If only the average person wasn't afraid of a directory
| tree...
| XorNot wrote:
| It wouldn't quite solve it: the issue is it's very helpful
| to hit a button on my phones home screen to get "different
| directory" immediately via a different shortcut.
|
| Like there's a fair bit of ergonomics here which I'm brute
| forcing by just having two camera apps.
| fuddle wrote:
| The website is almost unreadable with so many ads.
|
| Also I think this is overkill? "The following files are used in
| Open Camera"
| drnick1 wrote:
| You really need to start using an ad blocker. I don't see any
| ads at all, anywhere on the Internet. It boggles my mind that
| someone who reads HN does not use an ad blocker in 2026.
| lukan wrote:
| Oh there are still ads as some are baked into the content,
| but I can live with those. How people can live with the
| normal amount of ads - no idea.
| diacritical wrote:
| I had a friend years ago with laser focus. He was read an
| article on his laptop and I was behind him. I asked him how
| he tolerating the flashing chumbox ad. "Why don't you
| install Adblock Plus (the ad blocker of the day)?". He had
| to look around his screen for a second to find it. He said
| he didn't even register it before I told him about it.
|
| Even a single dead pixel would seriously distract me but he
| didn't even notice the gif of some disgusting medical scam
| ad showing elbows or knees or whatever.
|
| He could also fall asleep seconds after hitting the bed. I
| need at least 10 minutes - at least. Sometimes an hour.
| Maybe it's a related phenomenon.
|
| Some people just seem to ignore external stimuli better
| than others. Whether ads whose purpose is brand recognition
| work on them subconsciously, idk.
| Markoff wrote:
| tried to visit it without ublock, I still don't see any ads at
| all and see no reason why there would be any, can you tell me
| were are the ads?
| andai wrote:
| Here is a screenshot:
|
| https://files.catbox.moe/ukxte8.png
|
| I do have to wonder if this is a net negative. At least for
| me, it significantly reduces trust and respect for the
| website and developer, while I can't imagine the traffic
| produces any meaningful revenue?
|
| Edit: Just realized it's the same ad 4 times, haha. (I think
| the 5th one, offscreen, was the same too.)
| pwg wrote:
| With ublock origin, none of that appears on the site.
| unglaublich wrote:
| No wonder regular people hate technology.
| VladVladikoff wrote:
| What's fascinating to me is it looks totally different for
| me when I turned off my adblocker. We are i guess targeted
| differently by these ad companies.
| https://files.catbox.moe/9einuv.png
| serial_dev wrote:
| > Your personal data will be processed and information from
| your device (cookies, unique identifiers, and other device
| data) may be stored by, accessed by and shared with 210
| partners, or used specifically by this site.
| cc-d wrote:
| open camera is really good. we use it all the time
| RussianCow wrote:
| I use this on my Zenfone 8. It's...okay. The UI is pretty sub-
| par, but the main reason I use it is because the camera, by
| default, has this annoying, overly aggressive denoising filter
| built into it that makes everything look slightly cartoony, and
| there's no way to disable it with any other camera app I've
| tried.
| Markoff wrote:
| open camera pretty much always delivers worse results than
| gcam, have you tried it?
|
| https://www.celsoazevedo.com/files/android/p/gcam-asus-zenfo...
| RussianCow wrote:
| I haven't. I'll give it a try! Thanks!
| ValentineC wrote:
| I downloaded that on my spare Android phone (I'm primarily an iOS
| 17 user), but never ended up using it because it just wasn't
| aesthetically pleasant. I also don't really take photos using my
| Android phone, I guess.
|
| Randomly, I wish more UI/UX designers contribute to open source.
| petterroea wrote:
| This. I've had so many projects where I wish someone who really
| cared about UX could just tell me "this sucks, if you want I
| can help"
| flykespice wrote:
| Many programmers think they can cheat their way into
| designing a good UI, they just think it's just enough for you
| to learn and use a GUI framework, and place the widgets in a
| "good enough" way.
|
| Just look at the monstruosity that is the GUI version of
| wget, it's the epitome of programmers with no UX background
| trying to make a GUI application.
| catgirlinspace wrote:
| there's a gui for wget??
| jeffreygoesto wrote:
| Handbrake ;)
| joymonger wrote:
| wget is a download CLI tool. Handbrake is a video
| transcoder. I feel like I'm missing something, or just
| missed the joke lol.
| yonatan8070 wrote:
| I Googled screenshots of "wget gui" and "handbrake
| software", both are GUI programs with a whole lot of
| dropdowns, checkboxes, etc.
|
| Maybe that's the meaning of the parent comment?
| ValentineC wrote:
| Handbrake is aesthetically better, if slightly less
| powerful compared to MeGUI, but MeGUI is usable if one
| doesn't mind reading through some video encoding guides.
|
| Whatever came before MeGUI was likely much worse.
| eloop wrote:
| Yep, web browsers.
| flykespice wrote:
| yes https://www.jensroesner.com/wgetgui/wgetgui.png
| lukan wrote:
| I suppose if someone thought this, they would not have dared
| saying it?
|
| Many do make horrible UI, but would react poorly to
| criticism, hard to know before ..
| stavros wrote:
| I wish developers put in the faintest amount of thought into UX
| instead of just throwing together the first thing they came up
| with.
|
| Like, literally just add a photo of the app to your landing
| page. It's not rocket science.
| ValentineC wrote:
| > _Like, literally just add a photo of the app to your
| landing page. It 's not rocket science._
|
| Heh, I still remember a time in the internet where apps had a
| dedicated "screenshots" page.
|
| That was presumably a best practice when people were still on
| 56kbps dialup, and downloading images was expensive.
|
| Many telcos in the world don't even support 3G anymore.
| joymonger wrote:
| I wonder if we can get some UX folks to volunteer a day to
| review and write up improvement suggestions for various popular
| open source projects. I personally know bad UX when I see it,
| but I'm no expert on making good UX ;-)
| like_any_other wrote:
| You're wishing for a very double-edged sword. UI designers do
| as much harm as good. Disappearing scroll bars, rounded window
| corners for square content, hiding primary functionality inside
| a hamburger menu when there's plenty of room for labeled
| buttons, removing maximize/minimize buttons in favor of non-
| discoverable keyboard shortcuts.. I'm sure I'm forgetting lots,
| and that's just on GNOME.
|
| As a rule, if you, a non-UI designer, are bothered by it, then
| it doesn't take a UI designer to fix it.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| More than anything, I wish UI designers would work really
| hard on V1.0 and then leave it alone. There is nothing worse
| than having things move around on stuff you have been using
| for years, especially if you use it professionally. Add the
| new options at the end of the ribbon MS. While you are at it,
| don't make the menu items suddenly bigger so they look good
| on my big monitor, but then hide some of them when I use my
| laptop (that they fitted ok on last week). Don't move the
| account menu from the top to the bottom Reddit. I think that
| is one reason I keep coming back to hn. The UI has been the
| same the whole time I have been here
| wonger_ wrote:
| There are some initiatives for designers to contribute to OSS,
| like this one: https://opensourcedesign.net
|
| Dunno how popular/successful/active it is, tho.
| HelloUsername wrote:
| Would this be the iOS 'alternative'?
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47010018
| ValentineC wrote:
| The pre-iOS 26 native camera app is good enough for me, and I
| really like Live Photos, which most alternatives don't handle.
|
| I had a one-time purchase to Halide, but it somehow stopped
| working in early 2025 because Halide support claimed that the
| app's feature unlock (used to be one-time upfront purchase, now
| IAP) only works if I'm logged into the App Store account I
| purchased it from.
| HelloUsername wrote:
| From description in Appstore:
|
| *Please note: Halide is _not free_. We do offer a 7-day free
| trial for annual memberships. Don 't like subscriptions? You
| can also buy the app outright with a single in-app purchase.*
|
| Is that what you did?
| ValentineC wrote:
| I bought Halide v1, which was an upfront purchase.
|
| They grandfathered all existing v1 purchasers, but the
| grandfathering somehow stopped working for me because I
| didn't buy it on my primary App Store account (I switch
| between regions, but pay for my non-free apps using my US
| account because they're usually cheaper).
| Cider9986 wrote:
| GrapheneOS secure camera is great.
| https://github.com/GrapheneOS/Camera
| maxloh wrote:
| Also check out the one by LineageOS:
| https://github.com/LineageOS/android_packages_apps_Aperture
| andai wrote:
| What makes it secure? (There's no readme, and it just links to
| GrapheneOS homepage.)
| Cider9986 wrote:
| https://grapheneos.org/usage#grapheneos-camera-app
| crtasm wrote:
| By default, doesn't save metadata to images.
|
| Always saves metadata to videos.
|
| Doesn't request or need media/storage permissions. Defaults
| to no location permissions.
|
| So good - but room for improvement?
| Cider9986 wrote:
| Additionally all grapheneOS built in apps are going to be
| as compliant as possible with all of the app sandboxing
| and hardening features. Like mte, dcl, etc.
| metalman wrote:
| useing this on moto g15 it had, untill a moment ago, one thing I
| did not like which was to play a sound for starting a video
| recording. works, does the thing without guggle logo and chirpy
| blather, paired with "fossify" gallery, which is nice as I can
| set the background coulor of the icon to black, and have my
| background screen set ot a picture of something black, taken in
| the dark, so the center part of the icon is all that shows.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| Folks, if you have a page about a product that has a UI, please
| include images of the UI.
| afarah1 wrote:
| I've used it for several years now, it's a great app. Not
| perfect, there is noticeable lag to capture high resolution
| images, and lacks shutter speed control. Still, beats other FOSS
| alternatives in my experience.
| zzzeek wrote:
| what no AI? who will replace blurry photos of my family / the
| moon with stock photos so they look great?
| Sateallia wrote:
| With Open Camera, my device (and seemingly many others) have
| phantom cameras with IDs that crash Android's camera server if
| accessed. When that happens I have to restart my phone. Open
| Camera does not have a way to blacklist those. There are several
| issues open about this on the issue tracker but they have been
| open since 2020. This is not an easy problem to fix (LineageOS
| uses a manually populated key called "config_ignoredAuxCameraIds"
| in device trees to solve this for their Aperture camera app) but
| at least an option to filter those out manually if I know what
| I'm doing would be nice.
|
| The other two prominent open source camera apps are Fossify
| Camera and PhotonCamera. Fossify Camera does not support multiple
| lenses yet. PhotonCamera is nice because it does image processing
| and handles my camera lenses correctly but its UX is janky (on my
| device, with default settings, taking a photo takes 7-8 seconds
| and quitting the app before the process is complete loses the
| image), it's not on F-Droid and it doesn't automatically switch
| between lenses with zoom changes. There's also FreeDcam but I'm
| not a professional photographer and I'm certainly not going to
| buy a color calibration reference card that costs more than a
| hundred dollars.
|
| It sucks that on my phone with /e/OS, instead of using a FOSS
| camera app, I resort to using Pixel's camera app with internet
| permission disabled to be able to take advantage of my hardware.
| FireInsight wrote:
| What I love in Open Camera is that I am able to turn off all
| extra post-processing (noise, yes please) and use my phone camera
| with full manual settings like it was a DSLR (with a really bad
| sensor). Only problems are clunky UI and general slowness of
| taking pictures, but you get used to it.
|
| It's really unbeatable from a photographer / artist perspective,
| especially because I care a lot about imperfect gritty noisy
| looks and full control.
| wyan wrote:
| It says it's OSS, but I can't find a link to the source code in
| the website, am I just being dense?
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