CamRelay 1.0.4: Hear Your Camera in the Browser, and Recordings That Survive Anything

CamRelay 1.0.4 is now available on Google Play. This update is about trust: you can now hear what your camera hears right in your browser, your recordings are kept safe even when the phone crashes or loses power, and the app tells you honestly when it is recording and when it is not. There is also a long-awaited fix for recordings left behind after reinstalling the app, a darker main screen that is kinder to your battery, and a smoother, steadier stream from the first second.

Hear your camera in the browser

In 1.0.3 we added the live view to the web interface, so you could watch your camera from any browser without installing a player. The one thing missing was sound. Since then, it has been the most requested feature by far, and we understand why: a picture of the nursery is reassuring, but hearing whether the baby is sleeping or crying is what you really want to know.

With 1.0.4, the live view in your browser plays audio along with the video.

How it works

1. Start streaming in CamRelay.
2. On another device on the same Wi-Fi, open the web interface address shown in the app.
3. The live video appears at the top of the page, with a 🔊 Unmute button underneath. Tap it to hear the sound. Tap 🔇 Mute to turn it off again.

The video starts silent on purpose. Every browser requires a tap before a web page may play sound, so you will always have to unmute once. After that, your choice sticks: if the connection drops and comes back, or if you leave the page and return, the sound stays on.

Where it helps

• Baby monitor: keep the page open on a tablet in the living room and hear the nursery while you watch it.
• Pet camera: find out what the dog is barking at before you go and look.
• Front door or shop: hear the doorbell, a delivery, or a customer walking in.
• Workshop or garage: listen to a machine running in another room without leaving your desk.

Sound works in the same browsers and on the same devices as the picture: Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari on a Windows PC, Mac, Chromebook, iPhone, iPad, Android phone or tablet. Nothing to install, no account, no cloud. Everything stays on your own Wi-Fi.

Note: Sound plays in the normal live view. If the page has to fall back to the simpler picture mode, for example on a network that blocks the fast connection, you get the picture without sound. The Copy RTSP URL button still gives you the full stream with audio for VLC or an NVR.

Your browser tab now saves battery when you are not looking

Many people leave the CamRelay page open all day in a browser tab, next to their mail and their work. Until now, the phone kept sending the full live stream to that tab even when it was buried behind other tabs for hours, draining the phone's battery and using Wi-Fi for a picture nobody was looking at. It also took up one of the live viewer slots, so a family member opening the page later could be told the camera was busy.

Now the live view pauses automatically a few seconds after you switch to another tab or another app, and starts again by itself the moment you come back. You do not have to do anything, and quickly switching tabs back and forth does not interrupt the picture. If you look at the page and see "Live preview paused while this tab is in the background", that is all it means: the camera is fine, and the picture returns as soon as the tab is in front.

Recording and the normal stream to your NVR or VLC are never affected by this. Only the picture in that particular browser tab is paused.

Recordings that survive crashes and power cuts

When CamRelay records to the phone's storage, the file is written continuously while the camera runs. If the phone suddenly shuts down, the battery dies, Android closes the app, or the app crashes, the recording that was in progress used to be in a bad state: sometimes it played with the last minutes missing, sometimes it did not show up at all, and sometimes it was quietly deleted by the phone a week later. For a security camera, the moments before an unexpected shutdown are exactly the ones you want to keep.

1.0.4 fixes this in two ways.

Interrupted recordings are recovered automatically

The next time CamRelay starts after an unexpected stop, it looks for recordings that were cut off and finishes the job for you. A recording in the MKV format is saved with everything up to about one second before the interruption, and it appears in the File Manager and in your gallery like any other recording. A recording in the MP4 format unfortunately cannot be repaired after an abrupt stop; instead of leaving a broken file behind, CamRelay removes it so it does not clutter your list.

MKV recordings now include sound

MKV recordings used to be silent. That is fixed: MKV files now contain the audio track, just like MP4 files.

Which format should you use?

• MKV is the safe choice for unattended, long-running recording, for example a camera watching the house while you are away. If something goes wrong, you lose at most about a second.
• MP4 is the choice when you need to play the files on the widest range of devices without converting them, and you stop recordings normally.

You can change the format in Settings > Recording Settings > Container Format. Both formats are supported by VLC and by most media players.

A REC indicator you can trust

The red REC badge on the main screen used to light up as soon as recording was switched on in the settings, even when the recording had actually failed to start, for example because the storage was full. You could be looking at a reassuring red badge for hours while nothing was being saved.

The badge now shows only while a recording is really being written. If you have recording enabled and the badge does not appear, you know immediately that something needs your attention, usually free space on the phone or the storage permission. The web interface shows the same, honest status.

Clean up recordings from a previous install

Have you ever uninstalled and reinstalled CamRelay, or moved to a new build, and found old recordings that the app simply refuses to delete? On recent Android versions, files created by a previous installation no longer belong to the app, so CamRelay could not remove them automatically, the web interface failed to delete them with a confusing error, and they still counted against your storage limit.

1.0.4 handles this properly:

• In Settings > Recording Settings, a new Recordings from a previous install card shows how many of these files there are and how much space they take. Tap Delete old recordings, confirm Android's dialog, and they are gone.
• Old recordings no longer count towards Max Storage, and automatic cleanup leaves them alone, so your new recordings get the space they are supposed to get.
• In the web interface's File Manager, these files carry a Previous install label. You can still play and download them, and a short note explains where to delete them on the phone.

Android requires that you confirm this deletion on the phone itself. That is a privacy protection built into the system, not something CamRelay can skip, which is why the button lives in the app rather than in the browser.

A dark main screen that saves battery

The main screen, the one you leave on while the camera runs, is now always dark. On phones with an OLED display, dark pixels use almost no power, so a phone that sits on a shelf as a camera for hours lasts noticeably longer on a charge and runs cooler. Dialogs and menus on that screen are dark too, so nothing bright pops up in a dark room at night.

The other screens, Welcome, Permissions and Settings, follow your phone's light or dark mode as before. And if your phone switches between light and dark mode on a schedule, for example at sunset, the stream now continues without a hiccup; previously the switch could briefly restart the camera.

Smoother, steadier streaming

• No more pause when you press Start. On phones with many recordings, the app could freeze for a moment while it tidied up storage at the start of a stream. That work now happens in the background, so the stream starts right away.
• More stable over long sessions. We fixed a problem that could make the app close by itself after many hours of streaming, if the stream had been stopped and started again in the meantime. Restarting the stream, changing the audio format, or switching cameras now leaves the microphone in a clean state every time.
• Storage cleanup is smarter. When the storage limit is reached, CamRelay only deletes old recordings if that actually makes room for the new one. It no longer wipes a whole set of recordings in situations where that would not have helped.

Also in this update

• Settings fields that behave. Number fields in Settings, such as the port numbers, the segment length or the storage limit, can now be cleared and retyped from scratch. Previously the last digit could not be deleted and some values snapped back while you were still typing.
• Updated user guide in all supported languages, including the new recording features and the live view with sound: guide.xnano.net/camrelay.
• Smaller fixes and polish throughout.

Get the update

CamRelay 1.0.4 is rolling out on Google Play now. If you do not see it yet, it should arrive within a few days.

Get CamRelay on Google Play

Have feedback or ideas? Tap Feedback in the app's About screen. We read every message, and this release is proof: the sound in the browser is there because so many of you asked for it.