Selfie camera fails when switching to video - still works in other apps

I know it's not the hardware, as Telegram & Signal have no problem whatsoever using that same camera to record videos.

That doesn't assure that it's not caused by the hardware. There are no ongoing changes for the Pixel 4 XL beyond security backports and it has been almost a month since the last one. It wasn't caused by an OS update.

privacydude420 Seems improbable that it's hardware given every app except the actual "camera" app accesses it just fine.

I think we get essentially this question every six months or so.

Different camera apps use different hardware features (resolution, speed, focus, etc.), so it is possible for some apps to work when a camera has a hardware issue.

To investigate whether it's a hardware problem, the steps would arguably be:

• factory reset (wipes all data, so inconvenient)
• if problem persists, flash to Google's OS for several days,
• if problem is gone, try GrapheneOS again

I don't think anybody has ever gone through those steps and reported that the problem is observed only in GrapheneOS, even after a factory reset.

When hardware goes bad, by definition it does not behave in a logical fashion, so observations are likely to seem improbable.

privacydude420 Note that it is possible to run the GrapheneOS Camera app on Google's OS: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.grapheneos.camera.play

privacydude420 That's good news, and hopefully it will keep working.

If it works for a couple of days and fails again, though, that could be consistent with a hardware issue.

Good luck!