Camera

Buoy Desktop supplies a camera feed to Flutter apps in the iOS Simulator. Choose a source on your Mac, then relaunch the app process so the camera integration loads.

iOS Simulator only. Android emulators can already use a webcam natively, and this is not a physical-device tool.

Use it

Buoy Desktop → Camera → click a source. Then run your app however you like — flutter run, from your IDE, or a build someone handed you. Sources: Mac camera, Screen region, Barcode, Image, Video, Test pattern.

There is no package for this one. Nothing goes into your pubspec.yaml, nothing wraps your widget tree, and buoy_core is not required — it works on any booted simulator app, including apps that have never heard of Buoy.

The camera attaches at process start, so restart anything already running — hot reload and hot restart won't do it, because the library is loaded by the process before Dart runs. Switching source afterwards is live. Camera permission is pre-granted, so your app never prompts.

Screen region

A resizable box on your desktop is the camera. Put it over a QR code, a licence or a document and your app scans what's inside it.

Drag to move, pull a handle to resize, Esc to put it away. Resizing snaps to 16:9 — the only shape the camera has, so anything else gets black bars; hold Shift to override. Click-through lets clicks land underneath, so you can scroll the page you're filming.

Needs Screen Recording permission — without it the feed is black.

Barcodes

QR, PDF417, Aztec, DataMatrix, EAN-8/13, UPC-E, Code 128/39/93, ITF.

Detection runs on your Mac, not in the simulator, and the results are handed to the app through the same metadata API a real camera uses — so a scanner reading AVCaptureMetadataOutput gets them without knowing anything happened. The Barcode source generates a code from text you type, which is how you test a licence scanner without owning a licence.

What works

The devices are fabricated at the AVFoundation level, below anything Dart can see, so compatibility depends on how the camera plugin uses AVFoundation. Verified with Flutter's camera plugin: preview, the frame stream, photo capture, and video recording.

Plugins that go through AVCaptureSession should work the same way. That is an expectation, not a test result: only the camera plugin has actually been run.

Desktop & AI

This tool lives in Buoy Desktop; there is no in-app half to it. And with the MCP server, an agent can run a camera test end to end through its supported actions: find a simulator and its apps (camera_devices), see the Mac's cameras and windows (camera_inputs), pick what to show (camera_source), attach it (camera_launch, or camera_zero_setup for everything the simulator launches), then check its own work (camera_status, camera_diagnose) and clean up (camera_stop).

No app-side Buoy package or device connection is required. Camera MCP tools require Pro. QR generation is free; Screen region and additional barcode types require Pro. See Camera for the shared plan and source details.

Limits

• macOS + Xcode + Buoy Desktop. Screen sources need macOS 12.3+.
• Simulator only, not devices. Android emulators do webcams natively.
• No recording through AVCaptureMovieFileOutput — the camera plugin's own video recording works, but that specific output class does not.
• Front and back cameras are the same feed.
• No GS1 DataBar or Micro symbologies.
• One injection owner at a time — quit other simulator-camera tools.

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What's Next

• Images — Every image load, with cache verdicts and an oversize audit
• Network Monitor — The requests your capture screen makes afterwards
• Buoy Desktop — Where this tool lives

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FAQ

Do I need a Buoy package for this?

No. It is the one Buoy tool with nothing to install in the app — no pubspec.yaml entry, no BuoyDevTools wrapper, not even buoy_core. Buoy Desktop loads a small library into the simulator at launch and publishes frames to it, so any booted simulator app gets a camera.

Why does my Flutter app still say there's no camera?

The library is inserted when the process starts, so an app that was already running when you turned the camera on never got it. Restart the app — hot reload and hot restart both keep the same process, so neither is enough.

Can I scan a QR code without printing one?

Yes, two ways. The Barcode source generates one from text you type. The Screen region source points the camera at a rectangle of your own desktop, so you can scan a code on a web page, in a PDF, or in a design file.

Does this work on Android emulators?

It is not needed there — Android emulators can use a webcam as the camera natively. This tool exists because the iOS Simulator ships no camera at all.