So, you’re not able to get out there as often to use your GoPro as intended during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here’s how to turn it into something a little more useful in our current situation—a wide-angle webcam. However, it is only available for MacOS users for now.
GoPro suggests a Hero 8 Black “as a durable, mountable, ultra-high-quality webcam”, along with a beta camera firmware update and a USB-C cord. However, after looking through the official instructions, GoPros that precede Hero 8 Black can also be used as webcams—including Hero 7 Black, Hero 6 Black, Hero 5 Black or Hero 4 Black.
How to your GoPro into a webcam
Here’s how to turn your Hero 8 into a webcam:
- Download GoPro Webcam Beta Firmware on your Mac desktop. This contains the “UPDATE” folder to update your Hero 8 Black to support the new Webcam feature.
- Follow Steps 2-4 from these instructions to manually update your camera.
- Power on your camera and connect it to your computer via USB cable.
- In the status bar, the GoPro icon will display a blue dot to indicate a successful connection.
- Open your webcam application and select GoPro Camera as your preferred camera.
- You can click here for a more detailed list of instructions.
As for GoPro Hero 7 Black, Hero 6 Black, Hero 5 Black or Hero 4 Black, you can click here for detailed instructions. They also note that the most important thing for turning these GoPro cameras into a webcam is that they require at least one third party accessory.
Once you have the GoPro set up, you can then use it for all of your favourite video chat services, including Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Discord, and Zoom. It also works with Webex, Skype, Facebook Rooms, Messenger, and Slack, but you have to access them through Google Chrome.
The fact that this feature is available might help quite a number of you, as webcams are reportedly getting harder to find these days. Besides GoPro, many other camera manufacturers, including Fujifilm and Canon, have opted people to retool their cameras into webcams.
