A 100% free, no-frills, incredibly performant video capture viewer for Linux with no analytics or snooping.
Installers are available for the following platforms in the Releases:
- Fedora 44, 43, 42 (x86_64 and aarch64)
- Ubuntu 26, 24 (amd64 and arm64)
- Raspberry Pi OS Trixie
Consolation is also available for Apple devices (GitHub | App Store), Android tablets (GitHub | Play Store) and Windows (GitHub | Microsoft Store).
Consolation is a free app that enables your Linux workstation or RPi to be used as a display for devices like gaming consoles, other Raspberry Pis, and even a Mac mini, Linux or Windows PC, via a standard USB Video Class (UVC) video capture card.
The app is intentionally simple: watch the live video on your computer. No recording or saving, no streaming to the internet. Just plug and play, privately with no ads or tracking. Consolation will never make an outbound network request or listen for inbound network connections.
Consolation does not collect, send, or share your data. Audio and video stay local and transient while you are watching a connected capture device. The app is open source, contains no trackers or analytics, makes no network calls, and does not record, stream, save, or analyze audio or video. Consolation has no idea what content is coming through your capture card's feed, and nothing leaves your device, ever.
Read the full privacy policy at PRIVACY.md or https://centennialoss.org/privacy/.
Any capture device that appears to Linux as a USB Video Class (UVC) capture device via V4L2 (showing as /dev/videoN) should work with Consolation.
Consolation has been tested by the developers on all supported OS distributions with these capture devices:
- Elgato HD60 X - 👌 🚀
- Acer USB 3.0 Video Capture Card (model OCB5B0) - 👌 🚀
- WANKEDA 4K Capture Card 1080p 60FPS for Streaming (1da603d4) - 👌 🚀
- blueAVS 4K Capture Card (A3-B) - 👌 🚀
- Guermok Video Capture Card (GM-29A) - 👌 🚀
- PERESAL USB 3.0 Video Capture Card with PD 100W - 👌 🚀
- UGREEN Full HD 1080p Capture Card (model 40189) -
⚠️ max 30p @ 1920x1080
- A modern Linux distribution, recent as of January 2025, with support for Qt 6 and V4L2
- A UVC-compliant video capture card
deb and rpm installers place the binary in/usr/bin/consolation and add to the 'Audio & Video' Launcher menu. It is recommended to run as an unprivileged user.
- CMake 3.22 or newer
- C++20 compiler
- Qt 6.4 or newer development packages
- libjpeg-turbo development headers (software MJPEG decode)
- Optional:
libvadevelopment packages for VA-API hardware MJPEG on Intel/AMD
See DEVELOPER.md for distro-specific setup commands, optional hardware MJPEG dependencies, and runtime driver notes.
For a local dev build, run:
make buildSee the Makefile for release build targets.
Humans write this software with AI assistance. All contributions are well-tested and merged only after being reviewed and approved by humans who fully understand and take responsibility for the contribution.
While we welcome pull requests and other contributions from other humans, including AI-generated code, we do not accept contributions from AI bots. A human must review, understand, and sign off on all commits. All contributors must be able to defend their contributions under reasonable technical scrutiny. Please file an issue to discuss any proposed feature before working on it.
Consolation and its logo are trademarks of Centennial OSS Inc. Use of the name and branding is not permitted for modified versions or forks without permission. See TRADEMARKS.md for details.