Tdesktop: Take photo using Webcam

[brunobsouzac]

Sometimes I want to take a photo by Telegram Desktop, but there is only the option to send a photo. you can use the webcam to take a picture would be ideal. Something more elaborate and will be asked here a while is the links and video calling. Could release the webcam for video calling as it is more interesting in the desktop Smartphones.

Thank you for all devs!

[auchri]

414

[brunobsouzac]

@auchri thanks

[bilelmoussaoui]

If it's a duplicate, the best is to close this :P

[auchri]

Yes. Or close the old one :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

[brunobsouzac]

It is a duplicate, true. But more recent and images, it would be an attractive best perhaps. It's a question that few put only makes sense since the client is for desktop. What do you think?

[brunobsouzac]

I mentioned in #414

It's a safety issue, but it makes sense to have this option as it is focused on the desktop. A user get the smartphone to take pictures becomes much more complicated and we should focus on usability for both desktop and mobile. The telegram it is in need of a reformed, be simple, safe and objective.

Take a picture using the webcam also opens a possibility being requested by users is video calls and connections as well as Skype, but open, simple and secure. Of course the community will decide this with time.

[brunobsouzac]

what do you think of this idea ?? looks at the end of the reviews (I decided to make a mockup using the paint) https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/issues/1147#issuecomment-111154097 New UX/UI Design

[corb06]

Is this feature planned for future releases?

[brunobsouzac]

@corb06 I hope so. And that puts the shortcut ctrl + space to send voice messages instead of pressing and holding the audio button

[andrewxtsang]

+1 for screenshot capture
Line has this function in desktop
Also, should rename the title as #838 is closed

[corb06]

Yeah as of now all issues regarding selectable screen area for capture and send has been closed.

I will have to reopen another one.

[tommybrc]

This is almost a must already. I see no reason why the mobile version sends photos with any problem, while the desktop one has security issues with that! ¿Why? A lot less secure is to be able to send files!!

Having video calls would be great, but I think it should be required as a different issue, if it hasn't been already.

[auchri]

I see no reason why the mobile version sends photos with any problem, while the desktop one has security issues with that!

Who says something about security issues?

[Aokromes]

https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop/issues/781#issuecomment-108109171 did :)

[auchri]

But he is not a member of the telegram team, so it is not necessarily true what he says :wink:

[tommybrc]

• brunobsouzac commented on 2 Jun 2015: "It's a safety issue,..."
• ryanralph commented on 20 Jan 2015 on issue #414: "I disagree. As a security conscious person I would actually prefer to isolate...."

And a few more I don´t want to search now.

[mirh]

Who are still nobody. So please, leave the dev wonder how to implement straightforwardly something so code-burdening.

[tommybrc]

I leave them all do whatever they have to do. And I hope they are able to implement something asap! This would be a very nice functionality to have! Best regards!

[DiThi]

Tdesktop has ffmpeg as dependency (used to e.g. converts gifs to mp4s). It shouldn't be difficult to use it for webcam input, as It includes support for directshow and v4l2.

https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/DirectShow

[ADTC]

Oh, why not? I'm actually quite surprised that you can use the microphone to record sounds but you cannot use the webcam to take pictures and record videos.

I also like the ability to take a screenshot. Perhaps the menu can be expanded, like how you see it in mobile:

• File
• Camera (use current Photo icon)
• Photo/Video (use a photo frame icon with a small video icon offset)
• Screenshot (use a monitor with dragged box icon)

Camera should show a webcam window in the middle of Telegram window, and activate the webcam of the computer. Press to take a photo, or hold to record a video.

Photo/Video should open the dialog to select files. The filter should be 'Images and Video Files'. Videos could be compressed as well before sending, rather than sending huge files.

Screenshot should minimize Telegram window and activate an overlay where the user can drag a section of the screen to take a screenshot. If user held Ctrl while clicking _Screenshot_, or right-clicked _Screenshot_, Telegram window should not minimize but stay on screen (to be included in screenshot if user desired). _There should be a guide for first-time activation of this feature to tell the user how to use it (including the Ctrl/right-click modification)._

_PS:_ I don't really understand the security argument against webcam access, since messengers like Skype, Yahoo Messenger, etc are normally expected to be able to access webcam as part of their normal messaging experience, and one would expect the same with Telegram as a messenger. In fact, Telegram on mobile has full access to both cameras on a phone - including a recently introduced "previewing shortcut" to the Telegram's internal camera function. If a user is really paranoid about their faces being recorded in secret, they can disable Telegram's access to the webcam hardware, they can disable the webcam hardware or they can even physically block the webcam's aperture from capturing any light (there are those sliding window thingies to stick on a laptop webcam aperture you can find nowadays). But to suggest that you inconvenience everyone else with having to go through a whole lot of hoops to achieve such a simple functionality, JUST so that your paranoia is well served and taken care of is downright ridiculous.

[umagon]

Will this functionality be made?

[Aokromes]

Few days ago the battery of my mobile phone was exhausted, no gps, so i had to take a photo with windows camera application and send it with telegram, this way we can save time :)

[Aokromes]

Open source multiplataform library for this https://opencv.org/

[uzielweb]

Duplicated or not, secure or not. Telegram needs this two:

• video and photo via webcam in desktop app
• create a videocall in all apps

[Kyrluckechuck]

This is actually quite insane that it's not implemented yet!

Facebook for the web can even do it, let alone any other standalone messaging app which you install.

Can we either get the go-ahead to implement this or a solid reason why not?

It _seems_ to just be getting ignored because someone doesn't agree with the rest of us about this, but not actually providing any concrete reasoning...

[john-preston]

@Kyrluckechuck The reason is I'm not ready to add a QtMultimedia dependency (last time I checked it brought a hard dependency on libpulse and if I add that it won't be able to run on non-libpulse systems anymore) and without QtMultimedia it is not that easy to add webcam support in all supported systems. And I have no spare time for that :(

[Kyrluckechuck]

@john-preston Thank you for the response, that helps add some reasoning to it.

So I assume that if someone else were to create a pull request about this that didn't force the libpulse dependency it would likely get the A-OK?

Is the hesitation with requiring libpulse for building or for runtime usage on unix-like systems?

[john-preston]

@Kyrluckechuck The problem with libpulse is that if it is a static dependency and someone without libpulse will autoupdate tdesktop his version will be replaced with one that won't launch on his system anymore.

If someone makes a PR that adds a way to take a photo from a webcam and it won't add new static dependencies, this will be cool. It even can work not in all cases (not on all platforms / versions / DEs), but it should work at least on modern Windows / macOS versions and it should provide a way to check if it will work or not (so that UI elements could be hidden and so on), without bad user experience (like there is always a button, but no one knows will it work or not if clicked).

[Kyrluckechuck]

Absolutely, that makes total sense.

Thanks for the information, hopefully this will help move a PR along!

[jmallach]

Hey @john-preston, I don't understand: what happens if a new version of tdesktop starts depending on libpulse0? What if qtcore starts depending on something new? At some point you will need to add or remove or update dependencies, right? Let's see if I get it: this is in the case of people autoupdating the tdesktop binary. What happens if someone installs tdesktop without installing all the Qt libraries, for example? Isn't it the same case?

(I don't see this myself because I install tdesktop using apt or flatpak, never compiled myself or used upstream binaries if they exist)

[john-preston]

@jmallach Qt is linked statically. I don't think QtCore / QtGui / QtWidgets / QtNetwork will start depending on non-statically-linkable dynamic library.

[Johnnynator]

What happens if someone installs tdesktop without installing all the Qt libraries, for example? Isn't it the same case?

Qt is statically linked and therefore not needed on the system. It dynamically links only against these.

librt.so.1
libdrm.so.2
libz.so.1
libICE.so.6
libSM.so.6
libfontconfig.so.1
libfreetype.so.6
libEGL.so.1
libGL.so.1
libxcb.so.1
libX11.so.6
libX11-xcb.so.1
libdl.so.2
libglib-2.0.so.0
libpthread.so.0
libm.so.6
libgcc
libc.so.6
ld-linux-x86-64.so.2

[jmallach]

Ah, I see. So how do you deal with a system not having libglib or libfontconfig installed? Or do you consider all systems running a desktop environment will surely have those two? (I ask because I thought libpulse was pretty much the norm these days, too)

[corb06]

5 years and still not implemented. Whatsapp have had this feature for many many years

[Aokromes]

5 years and still not implemented. Whatsapp have had this feature for many many years

whatsapp "desktop" have support of take photo? :)

[corb06]

5 years and still not implemented. Whatsapp have had this feature for many many years

whatsapp "desktop" have support of take photo? :)

Yepp! 2 clicks and photo taken.

[purr]

This should be at the top of the list for addition if you want to be a good communication tool, especially in the 21st century every communication app has video call/screenshare expect this one!! makes it hard to switch when you like to video call your friends

[frzifus]

It would already be a great feature. Especially because people under Sailfish, UBPorts, fedora or Mobian use telegram desktop on their phones 😉 there a camera device is nothing more than a webcam.
in terms of security, access can still be limited via bw. At least on Linux.

[azat11]

Yeah, telegram is not really quick on adding new features, that's for sure. But then again their team is not as big as Facebook owned WhatsApp's, I think...

[uzielweb]

Please! We need to do all actions in all paltforms to this important request.

[barfin]

this would be a great feature