Witness features explained

What each feature does, how it works, and where its limits are.

Witness Camera is a free iPhone and Android app for recording safely and keeping footage checkable. Each page below explains one feature in detail, including what it cannot do. Written by the developer, so read it with that in mind.

Short answer. Witness records with the screen black, uploads a piece every 15 seconds to storage you own, hashes every piece with SHA-256, writes a chain-of-custody manifest and gets it independently time-stamped. Pro adds picture quality, burned-in time and location, a highlight cut and PDF evidence reports. It does not hide the recording indicator, always records sound and adds no encryption of its own.

Features

Stealth mode camera apps for iPhone and Android: what they can and cannot hide: What a stealth or black-screen camera app can and cannot hide on iPhone and Android, why the recording indicator stays, and the legal question that matters first.
How to hash video footage and prove it has not been altered: What a SHA-256 hash of a video proves, how to compute and compare one on any computer, and how Witness hashes every piece of footage on the phone before upload.
Trusted timestamp for video: how RFC 3161 time-stamping works: How an independent time-stamp authority proves a video existed at a given time, how to verify a .tsr token with OpenSSL, and what Witness sends to the authority.
Chain of custody for video: what a manifest records and how to check it: What a video chain-of-custody log should contain, what Witness writes in its session manifest (hashes, UTC times, location, authority), and how to verify it.
Record video straight to cloud storage while you are still recording: Why ordinary cloud backup only uploads after you stop, and how Witness uploads a piece every 15 seconds to Google Drive, Dropbox, Nextcloud or WebDAV as you record.
Send video and your location to a trusted contact while you record: How Witness shares each recording with an emergency contact as it arrives and lets you send your last known location with one tap. Free.
Burn a timestamp and GPS location into video on iPhone and Android: How to put the date, time and coordinates on screen in your video with Witness Pro, how it differs from the hidden hash and manifest, and when outlets want it.
Start recording video without unlocking your phone: How to start a recording in one press from the iPhone Action Button, Lock Screen widget or Siri, or an Android Quick Settings tile, widget or assistant shortcut.
Record video straight to Nextcloud or your own WebDAV server: How to send video to your own Nextcloud or WebDAV server while recording, why it keeps footage away from US cloud providers, and the trade-off on sharing.
Trim silence out of video automatically: the highlight cut: How Witness Pro automatically makes a shorter cut of a recording with the quiet dead air removed and the speech kept, and how it decides what counts as speech.
Record with the front and rear camera at once on iPhone and Android: How dual-camera recording works in Witness: front and rear together, the 1080p limit, how Pro settings turn it off, and device support.
Record video on a weak connection: how Witness sends a preview first: What happens to uploads on a crowded or slow mobile network: queueing, retries, nothing deleted until confirmed, and a low-resolution stand-in copy sent first.
Does Witness encrypt video? What protects footage and what does not: An honest answer: Witness adds no encryption layer of its own. What protects footage on the phone and in your cloud, what does not, and which tools to look at.
Generate a PDF evidence report from a video recording: What a Witness evidence package contains: a PDF report with timeline, device, location and segment hashes, the manifest and time-stamp proof, with no video.
How to blur faces and anonymise voices in protest video, and why it is hard: A practical workflow for protecting people in footage: keep the original, blur a copy, treat pitch shifting as weak, and use subtitles. Tools, limits and risks.

For guides written for specific jobs, see Witness for Professionals.

Questions

What is Witness Camera?

A free iPhone and Android app for documenting situations where you may not be safe. It records with the screen black, uploads while recording to storage you own, and hashes and time-stamps the footage.

Which features are free?

Black-screen recording, upload during recording, SHA-256 hashing, the manifest, independent time-stamping, emergency-contact sharing and dual-camera recording at 1080p.

Which features need Pro?

4K, frame rates, HEVC 10-bit, ProRes, Apple Log or HDR, burned-in time and location, the combined two-camera video, the highlight cut and evidence packages.

Try it free

The free app includes this. Set it up and test it before you need it.

Get Witness Camera for Free Get it on Google Play

More Witness features explained

Written on 27 October 2026. Features and prices change. This is not legal advice.