To “turn off” a live camera feed on [Raspberry Pi](https://www.ampheo.com/c/raspberry-pi/raspberry-pi-boards), you usually just need to stop whatever process/service is holding the [camera](https://www.onzuu.com/category/cameras) (preview app, streamer, or a background service).


**1) If you started the live preview yourself (rpicam/libcamera)**

On Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm, the camera apps are typically rpicam-* (renamed from libcamera-*).

If you ran something like:

* rpicam-hello --timeout 0 (infinite preview)
* rpicam-vid ... (record/stream)

Then stop it by:

* pressing Ctrl + C in the terminal, or
* closing the preview window (for rpicam-hello).

If you only want to hide the preview window (but the camera still runs), add -n (“nopreview”).

**2) If you don’t know what’s streaming (find and kill the process)**

A reliable way to see which process is using the camera device is:

`sudo lsof | grep /dev/video`

Then stop it, for example:

sudo kill <PID>
# or if it ignores SIGTERM:
sudo kill -9 <PID>

Common “quick stop” commands (works if you know the app name):

pkill -f rpicam
pkill -f libcamera
pkill -f mjpg_streamer
pkill -f motion
pkill -f ustreamer

**3) If the feed starts automatically (systemd service)**

Many camera streams are running as a service (mjpg-streamer, motion, etc.). Stop and prevent autostart:

sudo systemctl stop mjpg-streamer.service
sudo systemctl disable mjpg-streamer.service

(mjpg-streamer commonly runs via systemd like this.)

You can check what’s active with:

`systemctl --type=service | grep -i -E "mjpg|motion|camera|stream|webcam"`

**4) “Hard” privacy option**

If you want to be 100% sure nothing can stream, disconnect the camera ribbon (CSI camera) or unplug the USB webcam.