If you prefer to use Google Chrome as your default browser, you may also want the websites you visit to have access to your machine’s camera and microphone. You may also want to access only specific websites and block a few from getting access to your Chrome’s microphone and camera.
So, yes, you can set up Google Chrome to allow websites to access your camera and microphone, and also for specific websites. You can also change the settings back as per your convenience. It’s very easy to set up and even block websites. Let’s see how.
Most applications use your camera when needed but some apps might try to access it in the background or foreground without your consent. Wisom is a really simple tool that notify you with green and orange indicators when apps use Microphone or Camera. To use Wisom, you need to grant USAGESTATS permission by clicking the Start button at the app main page and grant the access (or go to Settings. Microphone will not work on Edge update. I downloaded the Edge update and the microphone works with Cortana but will not work on google homepage. If I switch to Chrome then it works on Google homepage. Im using Google maps for a driving trip and has given it access to location off course. Everything works fine, except for it keeps nagging me that Google play services needs access to body sensors, microphone and calender for maps to function properly.
Solution: Using Chrome Settings
Step 1: Open Google Chrome and click on the three vertical dots on the extreme upper right corner of the browser and click on Settings in the context menu.
Step 2: In the Settings window, scroll down and under Privacy and Settings section, go to Site Settings. Click on the arrow next to it to proceed to the next page.
Step 3: In the Site Settings window, scroll down and under the Permissions section go to Camera. Click the arrow next to it to proceed to the next window.
Step 4: Next, turn the slider on ,next to Ask before accessing (recommended) option. Turning this off will block the access to camera for the websites.
Step 5: Now, go back to the Site Settings page, scroll down to select Sound and click the arrow next to it to proceed to the next page.
Step 6: In the next page, turn the slider on next to the Allow sites to play sound (recommended) option. Turning this off will block the access to sound for the websites.
Step 7: Return to the Site Settings page, scroll up and select Microphone. Click the arrow next to it to proceed to the next page.
Step 8: Now, from the drop-down, select the appropriate microphone. You can test all the available options to find out which one works best and select that one. For instance, here we selected the 1st option which is the Default-Microphone (2- High Definition Audio Device).
Step 9: Next, turn the slider on next to the Ask before accessing (recommended) option. Turning this off will block the access to microphone for the websites.
That’s about it, and your Google Chrome can now access the camera and microphone for all websites.
Google Docs Microphone Access
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Ok, this is a straight to the point post! In previous posts I explained how to save an image directly from your webcam. However, that method was using OpenCV and it can only access hardware connected to the host (where the Jupyter notebook server is running). One classic example where you can’t access a webcam directly is Google Colaboratory. As I said at the beginning, you can only access the hardware from host, so the microphone also will not be available. Javascript to the rescue!For the first problem (capture image from your webcam) I modified something I found online (I couldn’t find the author!here it is, but it probably came from this example). You can see the final notebook below (and you should be able to test it!)
The microphone demanded something a little bit more hacky and painful, so I had to dig deeper into modern Javascript to make something that would work. It turned out I had to use ffmpeg because Chrome uses matroska/webm and I couldn’t find a way to decode it manually.
That’s it! I hope you all will be able to create some cool stuff using Google Colaboratory now.
UPDATE (17/03/2019): Apparently, it doesn’t work with iOS versions of Chrome and Firefox, and iOS Safari needed some cursor style to work.
UPDATE (26/12/2020): I forgot to update here, but I created a python library that has everything in one place!