camera resource (e.g. LED or handle) is on even when not being used during a call

[danyhm]

• Operating System (Linux/Mac/Windows/iOS/Android): Windows 10
• Delta Chat Version: 2.49.0
• Expected behavior: during call , when the camera is off , the resource for camera (e.g. the LED) should be closed
• Actual behavior: currently the camera resource is used even when off during a call which gives users a sense of privacy invasion! the same problem happens on the android client
  camera resource (e.g. LED or circle) is on even when not being used during a call deltachat-android#4389
• Steps to reproduce the problem: make a call , observe the camera resource is on (e.g LED) if no camera LED is present you may notice AV software giving notice that deltachat is using the camera even though it's not
• Screenshots:
• Logs:

[WofWca]

Good point.
The place where this is actually happening is

https://github.com/deltachat/calls-webapp/blob/b6c989216fc6dc2ba67599872dcfe77ba3b6ca9f/src/App.tsx#L57-L67

I think this might be possible to achieve by not requesting video: true if video is not enabled. It also might be possible to do so dynamically i.e. after the call has already started. May be better to check how other apps implement this.
Also this might get fixes when (if) we finally switch to a third-party implementation of a calls webapp.

Meta: I am not sure if this can be considered strictly a bug.

[danyhm]

Meta: I am not sure if this can be considered strictly a bug.

Regardless of this being a bug or not, it gives a horrendous feeling to the user. while other messaging apps never open the camera unless needed, DeltaChat being decentralized End2End encrypted chat application should not have such a privacy concern.

User are way less likely to trust an app that opens the camera when they didn't ask it to.

[account1009]

For now I comment here instead of opening a different issue because I suspect that the root problem is the same:
In Linux if I open the Gnome Camera App while I'm doing a deltachat audio call (not video call) I've got this error: "Could not play camera stream"
Is it possible that deltachat is keeping the camera steam during the call and other apps can't use it at the same time?

[WofWca]

Yes, Delta Chat has your camera stream but doesn't send it to the remote party.