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Gesture Cam

Webcam effects for video calls and camera apps, set off by hand gestures: thumbs up for fireworks, peace sign for confetti, and more. The effects play behind you, so they never cover your face. Linux: Arch (and Arch-based distros), Debian 13+, Ubuntu 24.04+ and Fedora 40+.

It shows up as an extra camera called Gesture Cam. Tested in Discord, Vesktop and GNOME Snapshot. Other apps that let you pick a camera (browsers, Zoom, OBS) should work too, but haven't been tried yet.

Download Gesture Cam

Installing

  1. Unpack the download in your home folder and go into it: 
    tar xzf ~/Downloads/gesture-cam.tar.gz -C ~
cd ~/gesture-cam
  2. Install what it needs and create the virtual camera (once). It asks for your password: 
    sudo ./setup.sh
    On Fedora this also turns on the RPM Fusion repository, where the camera driver comes from.
  3. Set up Python and add Gesture Cam to your app launcher: 
    python3 -m venv --system-site-packages .venv
.venv/bin/pip install -r requirements.txt
sed "s#^Exec=.*#Exec=$PWD/gesture-cam#" gesture-cam.desktop > ~/.local/share/applications/gesture-cam.desktop

Secure Boot on? Then the camera driver is blocked at first, and setup.sh prints a sudo mokutil --import … command. Run it and pick a one-time password. Reboot: on the blue screen, choose Enroll MOK → Continue → Yes, type the password and reboot again. Then run sudo ./setup.sh once more.

Using it

  1. Turn your camera off in Discord, Vesktop and other camera apps first. Gesture Cam needs the real webcam for itself.
  2. Open Gesture Cam from your app launcher, and keep its window open while you use it.
  3. In your app, pick Gesture Cam as the camera. In Discord, that's Settings → Voice & Video → Camera. It's only listed while Gesture Cam is on, so open or restart the app after turning Gesture Cam on.

The README in the download explains the settings and the gestures.