DS cam User Reviews

Customer Experience

Positive experience31.9% of reviews
Neutral17.4% of reviews
Negative experience50.7% of reviews

~ Based on 276 written reviews from the US App Store.

What users say

Is DS cam Safe?

DS cam has mixed safety signals based on user ratings. AppsHunter Safety Score for DS cam is 61/100.

This assessment is based on 172 user ratings, with an App Store average of 3/5.

Safety Analysis

41.3% of ratings point to a safe experience
14.0% of ratings suggest some concerns
44.8% of ratings point to a risky experience

~ Based on 172 App Store ratings for DS cam.

Is DS cam Legit?

DS cam appears to be a legitimate app. AppsHunter Legitimacy Score for DS cam is 95/100.

Based on 95 of 100 points across 7 verification signals from App Store and developer data.

Top reviews

Poorly designed app

Web app drops can’t connect remotely, then have to travel to site to enable quick connect. Poorly designed app.

Pinch zoom quality terrible

Not sure what you done but when I select a 4K quality stream and try to zoom in the quality is terrible compared to doing it on a pc. I can’t see details any more but I know they see these on my surveillance station. Kinda defeats the point in having a mobile app if you put such a terrible software zoom in that I can see much.

Can you PLEASE make this open source and we will all fix it.
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Super buggy

This thing is just plain bad. More often than not after dragging the time slider to go back in time it will lose audio; only way to get it back is to quit and restart, but then you’re back at live so that means it’s pretty hit and miss to listen to audio from the past at all. Going back in time produces wildly long delays before video starts playing. Why does Synology not care enough to fix this thing?
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Response from developer

Dear User, we apologize for the inconvenience. We can help you if you submit a support ticket so our development team can help to resolve the issue? Simply open DS cam and hit "Setting>Contact support" or go to https://sy.to/support2svs. Once you open a ticket, you may paste the ticket number here for us to ensure the issue has been resolved.

Works great

I can completely control my camera recordings and easily toggle through events

Läuft gut auf meinem IPhone

Ich nutze die App seit ca. 3 Jahren und hatte noch nie ein Problem. Habe aktuell die Version 5.12.0. nutze aktuell 5 Kameras.

Regular app crashing.

App regularly crashes. Randomly. Irritates me. On many iOS devices.
Please can you improve the stability of the app. Fees are charged for camera licences so I expect this to work.

Absolutely horrible.

Barely works on iPhone 13, iPhone 12 or iPad 10. Crashes frequently. Cannot scroll back in timeline without endless hang or crash. Event viewer works approx 4% of the time. Can’t believe this is what they offer.

I thought this was great

This was great. I put in one POE camera successfully in my backyard so I decided to buy two more for my front yard and my front door. But upon attempting to add the third camera, I was prompted to pay for a license, but when you go to purchase the license, it just says out of stock so now my third camera is completely useless to me. I am now stuck trying to locate a open source program.
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Struggling with Remote Access

Generally speaking I really like the app and live view works fine but I have had ongoing issues with trying to access recordings from notifications even on my home network.

Almost Perfect

Using the app with the new C400 cam. Only thing I really need in the app before I switch all my cams to Synology is live scrubbing on the timeline. When scrubbing back and forward it doesn’t show previews and only starts playing when stopping scrubbing. Please add this feature.

Push not reliable and no bookmarks!?

IOS Push alerts are often missing the camera thumbnail.

Also if Action Rule triggers a push notification you cannot click on it in DS Cam, it is useless.

Surveillance Station supports bookmarks - markers in the recording timeline of interest. These are important for integrations with external systems and for identification. Why does the app not? Motion events are too coarse and bookmarks have custom text which you can set and search for. You need to support more of the excellent SS functionality in your app. The app becomes the deciding factor in which NVR manufacturer solution users choose. I want to be able to filter for events like action rules or DVA AI triggers. All of this is missing. If you can’t keep your app up to date then open source it!

Update: the app crashes constantly if you add a Reolink Duo 3 to your system. A camera that SS claims to ‘support’… again, the app is really a let down.
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Videos saved from h265 cameras are not viewable on device

I love the app, hardly had any problem but since I changed 2 of my cameras which use h265, I cannot save, edit or share any recording as I can’t even open them on my mobile devices. It sounds ridiculous since I can view the cameras via the app.

Would love the ability to customize ios notification sounds…

If we could categorize alerts, have custom notification sounds in ios, that would be ideal…

Would be great way to take advantage of more advance ai face analysis to avoid notifications at times.

Edit: New issue June 2025, ios notifications now wont show previews, and instead mention encryption.

Slow and clunky

When is this going to get some attention? Reviewing footage is nearly impossible. App hangs and takes MINUTES to load previous events, if it ever loads at all!

App shuts down

While watching notifications videos, the app may play the video for a couple seconds and then shut itself down and then you have to restart the app to view the notification videos.

No updates

2025 and they still do not support downloading h265 videos while nearly all other systems do. They also dropped support for AAC audio to save a buck.

App is fast and stable!

I've used this app for over 5yrs and it's easily one of the most consistent and reliable apps I have. It's super quick and easy to use, great features for even novice users. My only wish is that in the camera layout view that they could add a larger grid for more cameras! The 2x3 view is nice but it would be great if a 3x3 (or custom views) could be added. Otherwise it's excellent!
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Response from developer

Dear Sir, your request has been recorded. thank you for the kindly feedback. We will keep working hard to make DS cam better. BTW. you can update to version 5.3.3 now! Have fun!

Version 5.4 wird verlangt, gibt’s aber nicht

Seit Monaten erhalte ich diese Fehlermeldung: „Benachrichtigungen sind verschlüsselt. Bitte aktualisieren Sie auf iOS DS Cam 5.4.0 oderAndroid DS Cam 3.5.0 oder höher, um die Nachrichten zu lesen.“ Aber die jüngste Version ist und bleibt 5.10. Wie kann ich diese Fehlermeldung abstellen? So kann man nicht sinnvoll mit der App arbeiten.
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OK but needs a few tweaks

App has good potential. Unfortunately the login process wont support things like cloudflare login. Opening this up would be a nice win. At the moment, quick connect is the only external option as far as i know

Keeps buffering

The latest version causes my camera feeds to keep buffering and go offline. I have to close the app and restart it to bring the feeds back. I wish I could use the older app again, it was solid.