How to allow camera access on Chrome mobile, on Android and iPhone

On a phone, Chrome needs two separate yeses before a website can use your camera: the phone has to let Chrome use the camera, and Chrome has to let that particular website use it. If either one is set to no, the site gets nothing — and most of the time the fix is a single switch in one of two places.

Android and iPhone keep those switches in different spots, so the steps are split below. Microphone access lives right next to camera access in every menu here, and a video call needs both, so it is worth checking the two together while you are there.

How to allow camera access on Chrome for Android

The first time a site asks for your camera, Chrome shows a prompt with three choices: Allow while visiting the site, Allow this time and Never allow. Picking the first one means the question will not come back every time you reload. If you picked Never allow at some point, Chrome quietly remembers it and stops asking, which is why the camera can seem to be broken when it is simply blocked. To undo that:

1. Open Chrome and tap More (the three dots to the right of the address bar).
2. Tap Settings, then Site settings.
3. Tap Camera (or Microphone).
4. Under Blocked, find the site, tap it, then tap Allow.

On the same Camera screen there is also a setting for every site at once. It needs to say that sites can ask to use your camera. If it is set so that no site may use the camera, Chrome will not even show the prompt, so no individual site can get through until you switch it back.

Chrome is allowed, but the camera still does not start on Android

Then the block is one level up, in Android itself: the phone has not given Chrome permission to use the camera at all. The menu names vary slightly between phone makers, but the route is the same:

1. Open your phone's Settings and tap Apps.
2. Find Chrome (if it is not listed, tap See all apps first).
3. Tap Permissions, then Camera, and choose an allow option.

There is one more switch that catches people out on Android 12 and later: a Camera access tile in Quick Settings, the panel you get by swiping down from the top of the screen twice. Turning it off cuts the camera for every app at once. Apps do not get an error when that happens — they get a blank picture, so a black video preview with no warning is the typical sign. Tap the tile to turn camera access back on. If you have never seen the tile, it may simply not be in your panel; it is listed under the panel's edit option.

How to allow camera access on Chrome on iPhone

Chrome on an iPhone asks in the same way when a site first wants the camera, with the same three choices, and an Edit option if you want to change your answer straight away. To change it later for a site you have already answered:

1. Open the site in Chrome.
2. Tap the camera icon on the left of the address bar.
3. Turn the permission on.

That icon only shows up for sites whose permission has been set before. If you do not see it and the site never shows a prompt, the block is almost certainly in the iPhone's own settings, not in Chrome.

No camera prompt in Chrome on iPhone at all

When the iPhone has not given Chrome access to the camera, Chrome cannot ask on a site's behalf, so the prompt never appears. Turn it on in the Settings app:

1. Open Settings and tap Privacy & Security.
2. Tap Camera.
3. Turn on the switch next to Chrome.

The same list exists for the microphone, one line below Camera in Privacy & Security. You can also reach both switches through Settings > Apps > Chrome on current versions of iOS. Then go back to Chrome and reload the page so the site can ask again.

If it still will not work

• The phone is managed by a school or employer. An administrator can lock these settings, in which case the switches may be greyed out and only they can change them.
• Another app is holding the camera. Close any app that was just using it — a camera app, a call in another app — and reload the page.
• The page loaded before you changed anything. A permission change does not reach a page that is already open. Reload it, or close the tab and open the site again.

What GoMeet1v1 asks for, and when

A one-on-one video call on GoMeet1v1 opens in your phone's browser, so it needs the camera and the microphone through exactly the switches above. It asks at the moment you start a call, not when you open the site: first a short note on screen explaining what the access is for, then Chrome's own prompt. If you have blocked access before, Chrome will not show that prompt again, and you will see a guide pointing you to the settings instead — that is the cue to go through the steps in this article.

Before a first call it is also worth a minute on the basics that have nothing to do with permissions — light, angle and sound — which are covered in how to have a better first video call. And if the camera still refuses after all of this, tell us your phone model and browser through the Contact page; that is usually enough for us to reproduce it.