Know the second your recording dies.
You set the phone to record and walk away. The recorder crashes, Android kills it, and you find out hours later. Camera Guard is the alarm for recordings nobody is watching — and it never touches your camera, so your recorder keeps running.
Free. No ads, no account, and it never asks for camera permission.
Every other camera monitor breaks your recording.
To check a camera, an app normally has to open it — which means taking it away from the app that's actually recording. Camera Guard reads Android's camera availability signals instead.
It never takes the camera
Your recorder keeps recording. Camera Guard only asserts that some camera must be in use while you're guarding.
No camera permission
Check its permission list: no CAMERA. Nothing to trust on faith — there's nothing to see.
An alarm you can't ignore
Alarm-stream audio forced to max, vibration, past Do Not Disturb — and it keeps ringing if Android kills the app.
Set it. Walk away. Get yelled at if it dies.
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Choose your window.
A warm-up (default 10 s), an end time — preset or any HH:MM — and a check interval that trades battery against how fast it re-verifies. Then tap Start.
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Open your recorder.
The guard's warm-up runs natively and the foreground service starts on the tap, so backgrounding the app can't stall it. This is where other setups silently fail — the recorder starts, and nothing gets simpler.
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While a camera is in use, it's green.
"Camera in use — monitoring" means your recorder holds a lens. Nothing else to do.
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If every camera goes free, it screams.
Recorder crashed or was killed? The alarm fires — loop sound, vibration, DND override. It stops the moment a camera is back in use, when the end time arrives, or when you tap Stop.
Everything exists to survive Android.
Foreground service
A visible, ongoing notification keeps the watchdog alive while you're in another app or the screen is off — no camera permission required for any of it.
Auto-resume after a kill
The guard is persisted. If Android kills the process and restarts it, the service restores the guard — alarm included — without any help from the UI.
Guided, not guessed
Live status for notifications, battery-optimization exemption and Do Not Disturb access — plus a shortcut to your app's system settings, where manufacturers like Xiaomi and Huawei hide their background-start controls.
Alarm volume readout
See the alarm-stream volume before it matters, get warned when the phone is muted, hear a test burst, or force max volume while guarding.
Nothing to configure
No lens picker: every camera is watched, so "in use" means any lens is busy — there is no wrong answer to get wrong.
A test alarm button
Prove it works in your hands, on your phone, before you trust it with six hours of footage.
What it can't do
Limits worth knowing before you rely on it
- It detects a camera that stopped being used. It cannot detect a frozen picture where the recorder still holds the camera — that state is invisible from outside.
- Android only. iOS exposes no equivalent API; no app can do this there. That's physics, not laziness.
- Some manufacturers throttle background callbacks. Grant the battery exemption, and use the check interval to re-verify state.
- Another app holding a second lens can mask a dead recorder — rare, and impossible on single-camera phones.
Who uses it
Phone-as-dashcam drivers — evidence for the shift you can't get back.
Overnight monitors — a room, a shop, a site, a build.
Lectures & meetings — two hours nobody is babysitting.
Creators & timelapse shooters — the sunset that happens once.
Coaches & event volunteers — the session the team needs.
Questions worth asking
Does it replace my camera app?
No — and that's the point. Keep whatever you record with. Camera Guard works alongside it, because it never opens the camera itself. Other "camera monitor" apps take the camera from your recorder, which defeats the purpose.
How does it know my recording died?
Android tells any app which cameras are currently in use, without opening them. While you're guarding, Camera Guard asserts that at least one camera must be in use; the moment every camera is free, the recorder has released the lens — crashed, killed, or stopped — and the alarm fires.
Will it wake me up if the alarm goes off at 3am?
That's what it's for. The alarm loops on the alarm stream at forced max volume (default on), vibrates, and — with your permission for Do Not Disturb access — rings through DND. Your volume and DND settings are restored when the guard stops.
What happens if Android kills it?
The guard state is persisted and the foreground service restarts itself, resuming the guard including the alarm. You're also prompted to grant a battery-optimization exemption and to open your app's system settings, where some manufacturers hide their background-start switch.
Why isn't there an iPhone version?
iOS gives apps no way to observe another app's camera usage, and screen capture of other apps isn't available to ordinary apps either. An external camera watchdog cannot exist on iOS.
Is it free?
Yes. No ads, no account, no in-app purchases, no tracking. Don't take our word for it — the permission list on the Google Play listing shows exactly what the app asks for, and there is no camera permission among them.
Six hours of footage is worth a ten-second setup.
Android 7+ · no camera permission · alarm survives a process kill.