{"id":284139,"date":"2026-06-30T14:16:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T18:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/30\/how-i-turned-my-old-android-phone-into-a-dashcam-for-free-in-5-easy-steps\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T14:35:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T18:35:12","slug":"how-i-turned-my-old-android-phone-into-a-dashcam-for-free-in-5-easy-steps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/30\/how-i-turned-my-old-android-phone-into-a-dashcam-for-free-in-5-easy-steps\/","title":{"rendered":"How I turned my old Android phone into a dashcam for free &#8211; in 5 easy steps"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/how-to-turn-phone-into-dashcam-for-free\/\">How I turned my old Android phone into a dashcam for free &#8211; in 5 easy steps<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/how-to-turn-phone-into-dashcam-for-free\/\">https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/how-to-turn-phone-into-dashcam-for-free\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-06-30 14:16:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.zdnet.com\">www.zdnet.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>    <span class=\"c-shortcodeImage_credit g-outer-spacing-top-xsmall u-block\">Elyse Betters Picaro \/ ZDNET<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Follow ZDNET: <span class=\"c-commerceLink\"><span>Add us as a preferred source<\/span><\/span> on Google.<\/p>\n<h3>ZDNET&#8217;s key takeaways<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>An old Android phone (or iPhone) can work as a free dashcam.<\/li>\n<li>Dashcam apps enable loop recording, GPS, and timestamps.<\/li>\n<li>A solid mount and charger help the setup to work best.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I don&#8217;t review phones as much as I did at the start of my tech journalism career, but at one point, I was flipping between two or three devices a month. So, today, I have a lot of old Android phones and iPhones stashed away in forgotten totes. Lately, though, I&#8217;ve been repurposing some of them. I even turned a spare Pixel into a security camera. That got me thinking: Can a phone be a dashcam?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Also:\u00a0<\/strong><strong>How I turned my old Android phone into a streaming stick for free &#8211; in 6 easy steps<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Turns out, it&#8217;s possible and free if a few accessories, such as a phone mount, are already on hand. Obviously, a dedicated dashcam is the cleaner long-term solution for most drivers, but as a free weekend experiment, my old Android phone works surprisingly well.<\/p>\n<h2> How I turned my phone into a dashcam for free<\/h2>\n<p><strong>What you&#8217;ll need: <\/strong>For this setup, I used a Pixel 9a phone, a USB-C charging cable, a car charger, a windshield or dashboard phone mount, and a free dashcam app from Google Play. I used Droid Dashcam because it supports loop recording.<\/p>\n<p>First, I decided to treat my Pixel like a single-purpose device. A phone-turned-dashcam does not need Snapchat, work email, photos, games, or 47 notifications from apps and services. So, I backed up anything important and factory reset the phone. Then, after setting up the phone again, I removed all unnecessary apps, turned off notifications, and enabled Do Not Disturb.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>To factory reset an Android phone, go to Settings  System  Reset options  Erase all data.<\/li>\n<li>To remove any unnecessary apps, press and hold the app icon, tap App info, and select Uninstall.<\/li>\n<li>To turn off notifications, go to Settings  Notifications and disable everything, including lock-screen notification previews.<\/li>\n<li>To&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/how-to-turn-phone-into-dashcam-for-free\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How I turned my old Android phone into a dashcam for free &#8211; in 5&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":284140,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/a\/img\/resize\/1bb0170b970e2f0cfc6116b7ea16961fa3516914\/2026\/06\/30\/25d3b8b8-006f-4815-9eb7-bc0eb2a1ddd9\/6.jpg?auto=webp&fit=crop&height=675&width=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[70,72,57],"class_list":["post-284139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-android","tag-google","tag-pixel","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284139"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284139"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":284141,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284139\/revisions\/284141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}