This simple tutorial is going to show you how to disable laptop camera in Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy. Cameras are controlled by the uvcvideo kernel module, so all you need to do is block it from loading.

After this tutorial, you’ll get a blank screen in Cheese:

blank screen after disabled camera

To get started:

Press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command to disable the camera until reboot:

sudo modprobe -r uvcvideo

You will be asked for your password, and after typing it, if there are no errors shown in the terminal, your webcam should be disabled.

To enable your webcam again, run:

sudo modprobe uvcvideo

If you want to permanently disable camera, run below command to block the kernel mode by adding to config file.

echo 'blacklist uvcvideo' | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

Reboot your machine and done.