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Frequently Asked Questions

If you're struggling to use Can You See Me or you have a question about the tool the below frequently asked questions may help.

How do I use the tool? What does the feedback that it's giving me mean?

See the how to use page for an overview.

Can You See Me says that it was unable to detect my webcam. What should I do?

Please make sure that your webcam is connected to your computer and turned on if required. If you're certain that it is please get in touch.

Can You See Me wasn't able to find my face. What should I do?

There are a few reasons this could be happening but fortunately most of them are relatively easy to resolve:

  • Experiment with moving your upper body or webcam around until it finds your face then optionally modify your position and or the position of your webcam until your face is where you want it to be.
  • Try to ensure that your room is well-lit if you're able to do so.
  • Some webcams have privacy shutters that prevent the camera from seeing anything. This is particularly common for webcams on laptops. If this is the case you will need to open the shutter which can usually be done by pulling it to the left / right or up / down.
  • Can You See Me currently uses the first device that your operating system tells it is a webcam. For the most part this is a sensible strategy, although occasionally it will end up using the wrong one. If you have multiple camera-like devices connected (scanners that are also cameras are good examples), temporarily disconnect all other devices, open Can You See Me again, scan for faces until you're happy with your faces position and then reconnect the other devices.

Can You See Me sometimes says "low confidence" or "very low confidence" after I receive a set of results. What does this mean?

Whilst the technique used to detect faces is largely reliable it is unfortunately not perfect. If you receive either of the above messages when using the tool, it means that more than 1 face has been detected in the image. In this instance the tool has no way of knowing which face (if any) that has been found is the real one.

Of course, if you're expecting multiple faces to be in shot these warnings can be safely ignored. In these instances Can You See Me will provide information relating to the largest face on the screen. Unfortunately it's not easily possible to obtain information about other faces present at this time, although technical users may wish to invoke the tool with the --debug (or -d for short) option as a workaround (see below for more information).

Why does Can You See Me say that my face is to the right when my webcam is to my left or vice versa?

Can You See Me reports the location of your face from the perspective of your webcam. For example, if your webcam is to your left, this means that from your webcams point of view you are currently in the right of the frame.

Can You See Me is telling me I'm in the left of the frame, but when I join a Zoom meeting, I'm in the right of the frame or vice versa. What's happening?

Zoom is most likely rotating your video for you. This is relatively easy to change though - click here for instructions.

NB: if you believe this is happening during a Teams meeting please get in touch.

Can You See Me is locating my face correctly but my face is visually in the wrong location in the window of the tool. What's happening?

Can You See Me will sometimes behave incorrectly from a visual point of view if your screen resolution is set to an abnormally low value, although the circumstances required to trigger this behaviour mean that this will usually never happen.

A typical example of when you may experience this is when using Can You See Me on a desktop with no monitor connected whilst sharing your screen to demo the tool. In this instance your computer may have defaulted to an abnormally low resolution due to the lack of a monitor, which has now made itself apparent due to the screen sharing.

How are the percentages given as part of the more detailed results calculated?

  1. Can You See Me first determines the coordinates of your face within the frame.
  2. Based on the above 2 centre pixels - E.G. the pixels in the centre of the y and x axis are calculated.
  3. The percentages are then calculated using this information in combination with the width & height of the frame.

For example: if a frame has a width of 1920 pixels, a height of 1080 pixels and the centre pixels of a face are positioned at y540 and x860, Can You See Me would speak y: 50% x:50%.

What resolution are the photos that Can You See Me takes?

Can You See Me will take photos at the highest supported resolution of your webcam up to a maximum of 1080P (1920x1080). E.G. if your webcam only supports 720P photos will have a resolution of 1280x720, but if your webcam is 4K capable the photo will have a resolution of 1920x1080.

Does Can You See Me send images to third parties for processing? Does id contain any telemetry type functionality?

No. All image processing is done on device and no information is sent to me when the app is used.

Will Can You See Me work in environments with locked down IT setups such as workplaces or schools?

Quite possibly. Can You See Me doesn't require installation or administrative rights to function which makes it well-suited to these sorts of environments, although the kind and scale of restrictions present will vary from environment to environment so it's unfortunately not possible to provide a definitive answer either way.

If you would like to be able to use Can You See Me on a computer where restrictions are present a conversation with your IT department is usually a good place to start.

Does Can You See Me have any command line options?

Yes. If you pass it the --debug (or -d for short) option, the exact number of faces found along with the x, y, width and height information for each face will be spoken. Green borders will also be printed around each detected face which will be present in any photos taken.

What license does Can You See Me use?

Can You See Me is licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2. Click here to read the license.