Posted by MKuykendall 9/7/2025
So I built CrabCamera – a Tauri plugin that handles all the camera complexity for you.
What it does:
- One API, three platforms: Same Rust code works on Windows (DirectShow), macOS (AVFoundation), and Linux (V4L2)
- Permission handling: Automatically requests camera permissions on each platform
- Format conversion: Takes care of the messy bits between platform formats and what your app needs
- Error handling: Proper Rust error types instead of mysterious crashes
- Hot-plugging: Detects when cameras are connected/disconnected
The problem it solves:
Before CrabCamera, adding camera support to a Tauri app meant:
1. Writing separate native code for each platform
2. Managing three different permission systems
3. Handling format conversions manually
4. Debugging platform-specific edge cases
5. Maintaining it all as OS APIs change
Now it's just:
use crabcamera::Camera;
let camera = Camera::new()?;
let frame = camera.capture_frame().await?;
Why I built it:
I was working on a plant monitoring app (botanica) that needed reliable camera access for time-lapse photography. Existing solutions were either abandoned, platform-specific, or required complex native
bindings.
The Tauri ecosystem is growing fast, but camera support was this obvious gap. Every desktop app eventually needs camera access – video calls, document scanning, AR features, security monitoring.
Technical highlights:
- Uses nokhwa for the heavy lifting but wraps it in Tauri-friendly APIs
- Proper async/await support throughout
- Memory-efficient streaming for video capture
- Built-in image processing pipeline
- Extensible plugin architecture
What's next:
- WebRTC integration for video calls
- Built-in barcode/QR code scanning
- Face detection hooks
- Performance optimizations for 4K streams
The crate is MIT licensed and available on crates.io. I'd love feedback from other Tauri developers who've wrestled with camera integration.
Links:
- Crates.io: https://crates.io/crates/crabcamera
- GitHub: https://github.com/Michael-A-Kuykendall/crabcamera
- Documentation: https://docs.rs/crabcamera What's next:
- WebRTC integration for video calls
- Built-in barcode/QR code scanning
- Face detection hooks
That page says that "By using the OS’s native web renderer, the size of a Tauri app can be little as 600KB." sounds like an alternative for Electron basically
If need only mobile (iOS / Android) then react-native-vision-camera probably the best bet.
If need only simple camera access then opencv
I thought the "demo_crabcamera.py" was funny with respect to vibecoding: it's not a demo (I already found it odd for a Tauri app to be demo-ed via a python script); it produces the description text posted by OP.
On a more serious note, it all looks reasonably complete like most AI generated projects, but also almost a one shot generated project which hasn't seen much use for it to mature. This becomes even more true when you look a bit deeper at the code, where there are unfinished methods like:
pub fn get_device_caps(device_path: &str) -> Result<Vec<String>, CameraError> {
// This would typically query V4L2 capabilities
// For now, return common capabilities
Ok(vec![
"Video Capture".to_string(),
"Streaming".to_string(),
"Extended Controls".to_string(),
])
}
Perhaps it all works, but it does feel a bit immature and it does come with the risks of AI generated code.