Gobcam

Animated emoji reactions for any Linux video call, served as a virtual webcam.

Why

Most call apps draw reactions inside their own client. On Linux those features are often late, broken, or missing, and the overlay only exists inside that one app.

Gobcam draws the reaction into the camera feed instead. The meeting app doesn't need an integration or plugin; it just sees a webcam, and the overlay shows up wherever that camera is used.

What it is

Two processes start together:

• A GStreamer pipeline daemon that reads your real camera, blends emoji reactions on top, and writes the result to a v4l2loopback device (/dev/video10).
• A floating Tauri panel for picking emoji and triggering them. Global hotkeys, a system tray, full search across the ~1500 emoji in Microsoft's Fluent UI Emoji set.

For normal use, start the UI (Gobcam, gobcam-ui, or the AppImage). It will attach to an existing pipeline daemon if one is already running; otherwise it starts gobcam-pipeline itself.

Reactions stack instead of replacing each other, so repeated clicks create a cascade across the frame. Static 3D Fluent images and animated APNGs both work; they are fetched on first use and cached locally.

Install

Pick the path that matches your distro. Each package installs the same daemon and UI.

Arch / Manjaro / EndeavourOS — local package build

just aur-install-local   # builds and installs the local gobcam-bin package
sudo gobcam-setup        # one-time: enables passwordless loopback resets

The AUR publish is still upcoming. The local recipe uses the same PKGBUILD.in that will be published later, but it installs from the .deb built in your checkout instead of downloading from a public release URL.

Debian / Ubuntu / Mint / Pop!_OS — .deb

Grab Gobcam_*.deb from the latest release and install it:

sudo apt install ./Gobcam_*.deb

The postinst loads v4l2loopback, drops the /etc/modules-load.d

• /etc/modprobe.d snippets so it auto-loads at boot, and writes a narrow /etc/sudoers.d/gobcam rule for the panel's auto-reset path. Gobcam appears in your application launcher.

Everything else — AppImage

Grab Gobcam_*.AppImage from the latest release:

chmod +x Gobcam_*.AppImage
./Gobcam_*.AppImage

The first launch shows a Set up Gobcam prompt that runs the bundled gobcam-setup via pkexec (graphical password prompt). After that, the loopback module loads on every boot and the app opens straight to the panel.

To make the AppImage appear in your application launcher, drop it under ~/Applications/ and use AppImageLauncher or appimaged.

First run

1. Launch Gobcam from your application launcher (or run the installed gobcam-ui / the AppImage directly). Starting the UI is enough; it starts the pipeline daemon if it is not already running.
2. The first time the panel opens, it picks /dev/video0 as the input camera. If that's wrong, open the settings drawer and pick another device.
3. Open your video call client (Teams, Meet, Zoom, Discord, a browser at https://webcamtests.com/) and select Gobcam as the camera.
4. Click any emoji in the panel. It plays over your feed for a few seconds.

Using Gobcam

Search. Start typing — the catalog filters live.

Hotkeys. Three slots are bindable from the settings drawer: hold the chosen modifier + key from anywhere on the desktop and the mapped emoji fires. The default modifier is Super.

Tray. Closing the panel hides it; only the tray's Quit (or killing the supervising UI process) ends the daemon. Right-click the tray icon to bring the panel back, toggle reactions on or off, or quit.

Cascade. Spam-clicking the same emoji stacks reactions across the frame instead of replacing the previous one. Up to 48 concurrent reactions; the 49th waits for a slot.

Always-on overlay. For debugging or automation, you can run the daemon directly:

gobcam-pipeline --overlay fire     # pinned, no animation

Programmatic triggers. The daemon listens on a Unix socket when launched with --socket:

SOCK="$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/gobcam.sock"
gobcam-pipeline --socket "$SOCK" &
echo '{"type":"trigger","emoji_id":"fire"}' | ncat -U "$SOCK"

Wire types: see crates/protocol/.

Build from source

Quickstart for contributors lives in AGENTS.md. Short version:

./scripts/setup-host.sh   # GStreamer plugins + v4l2loopback-dkms
just install-loopback     # one-time, sets up /dev/video10
just app                  # build everything, launch the panel

Supported toolchain is pinned in rust-toolchain.toml. Run just check before committing; just ci adds the Docker image build for a fuller local pass. Pull requests run the same gate in Actions.

Status

• What works: webcam → optional always-on overlay → up to 48 concurrent triggered reactions with fade/drift animation, hotkeys, tray, lazy-fetched animated APNGs, v4l2loopback output.
• Roadmap: see docs/roadmap.md.
• Changelog: see docs/CHANGELOG.md.
• Architecture: see docs/architecture.md.
• Troubleshooting: see docs/troubleshooting.md.

License & credits

Gobcam is MIT-licensed; see LICENSE.

• Emoji artwork: Microsoft Fluent UI Emoji (MIT).
• Demo footage: Big Buck Bunny © Blender Foundation, CC-BY 3.0. Used here as a stand-in for a real webcam feed in the screenshots and demo GIF.
• Built on GStreamer, Tauri, and Svelte.