A black screen is a slightly different problem from the camera not working at all — the connection often succeeds, but no actual video frame comes through. A few causes are specific to this exact symptom, and that's what this page focuses on. For general permission issues, our camera and mic troubleshooting guide covers that ground in more depth.
If you have software like OBS Studio installed, it often creates a "virtual camera" device that shows up in your browser's camera list alongside your actual webcam. If that virtual camera gets selected by mistake — and it's not currently broadcasting anything — your browser thinks it has a working camera connected, but there's no actual video signal coming from it. The result looks exactly like a black screen, but the fix isn't a permission reset; it's switching the selected input back to your real camera (often labeled something like "Integrated Webcam" or your camera's actual model name) in your browser's site settings.
On Windows 10 and 11, there's a system-level camera privacy setting separate from anything your browser controls: whether desktop applications are allowed to access the camera at all. If this is turned off, your browser can technically have permission and still get nothing from the camera, which shows up as a black screen rather than a permission error. To check it: open Windows Settings → Privacy & Security → Camera, and make sure "Let apps access your camera" (and specifically the option for desktop apps) is turned on.
macOS has a similar system-level permission, separate from the browser's own prompt. If you've never explicitly granted your browser camera access at the macOS level — or if it was revoked at some point — the browser can still show its own "Allow" prompt and get a green light from its own permission system, while macOS itself silently blocks the actual camera feed underneath. Check System Settings → Privacy & Security → Camera, and confirm your browser (Chrome, Safari, or whichever you're using) is checked in that list, not just allowed within the browser itself.
Occasionally, a graphics driver issue can cause the video stream to fail to render even though everything else about the connection works. This shows up as a black screen rather than any visible error. Toggling hardware acceleration off, then back on, in your browser's settings can sometimes clear this up by forcing the browser to reinitialize how it talks to your graphics hardware. This doesn't work for everyone — it depends on what's actually causing the issue on a given device — but it's a reasonable, low-effort thing to try if nothing else has helped.
Most other camera issues — permission blocks, another app holding the camera open, mobile OS-level restrictions, network problems — aren't unique to the black-screen symptom specifically; they're general camera and connection issues covered properly in our camera and mic guide and our connection errors guide. Worth checking those if the causes above don't match what you're seeing.
Often a virtual camera being selected instead of your real one, a Windows-level camera privacy setting blocking browser access, or another app already holding the camera open.
A black screen usually means the connection succeeded and the browser has some access to a camera, but no actual video frame is coming through — often because the wrong source is selected. A camera not working at all is more often a straightforward permission block.