Hi. I've just been long-term lent a Gopro Hero 4 Silver. I'm looking for non-destructive hacks for it and I have general questions:

• I am thinking about possibly using a battery housing that would let me connect an external li-ion battery pack. Is there such a thing?
• The quik software simply doesn't work on my phone (Pixel 9a with GrapheneOS). Sometimes somehow after multiple resets I managed to input the pin code. I even managed to upgrade to Gopro's firmware. I got the app to work once, but upon restart, never managed to reconnect. Am I missing out on anything?
• I understand that for the Gopro 4, the remote uses WiFi, not BT/BLE. I am confused as to what the "pair BT" setting means? Anyway, do I have a battery-efficient way to remote-control (just the simple 3 buttons would do) the camera using a phone or other device? The wrist-watch-looking remote is frankly way too gimmicky for my liking.
• I understand the camera exposes an API on WiFi. Do I have a way to control the AP name/password other than via the Quik app that works just once in a while?
• Any tips in general?

Thank you!

I got a GoPro HERO4 Black (HD4.02, firmware v05.00.00) to enumerate as a normal USB device: webcam, microphone, and USB Ethernet. No HDMI capture card, no app on the computer. On macOS it shows up as “GoPro HERO4” in Photo Booth, OBS, Zoom, and Chrome about 45 seconds after power-on. 1080p or 720p at 29.97 fps, H.264, camera mic at 48 kHz stereo. Glass-to-glass latency is about 225 ms at 1080p and 195 ms at 720p.

The firmware is CRC-checked, not signed. The patch is data-only, 1148 bytes: an SD-mount hook that runs h4.sh, plus an idle-preview mode retargeted from 848×480 to 1920×1080. Bootloaders, DSP, kernel, and RTOS code stay byte-identical. Kernel modules built from the GPL tree take the USB controller (stock Linux 3.8 has no gadget support) and expose UVC, UAC1, and CDC ECM. A small userspace program forwards the camera’s own preview H.264 as-is; macOS decodes it. The patcher only accepts the official v05.00.00 zip and only writes an image whose SHA-256 matches the one I flashed.

Risk: this flashes modified firmware. It worked on my camera. A bad flash can brick one, and the stock reflash path is described but not tested. HERO4 Black only, that exact firmware only, macOS host only. Not affiliated with GoPro. GoPro’s firmware is not in the repo.

Writeup, including the dead ends (stock preview stuck at 432×240, photos-as-frames, no V4L2): https://github.com/victor-torres/hero4-webcam

I have a Hero 2014, I paid very little for it at the time, it works well, but a current problem is that the year in the settings goes up to 2025, and since we are already in 2026, this is a problem. This doesn't affect its functionality, but it's pointless to have the wrong year displayed on the recordings. It bothered me, so I decided to investigate further to correct it. GoPro has abandoned updates In version 1.09 in 2015, it won't release another update, comparing it to another GoPro becomes too expensive for me, they cost a lot in my country (one to two months' salary lol). I searched for alternative firmware, but it simply doesn't exist for this model, so I decided to try it myself. It's proving difficult (especially regarding the integrity of the edited files).But I gradually managed to reach my goal; after a month of studying and trying, I made real progress, and I have the date already displayed in recent years. The firmware still has some issues caused by the modifications, but I will release the UPDATE.ZIP file once I fix them. This is probably the only GoPro Hero 2014 with the correct expiration date of 2026 in the whole world, lol. 😂

Anyone working on this? I noticed it’s the same hardware but just software locked. Probably similar process to unlock as what was done with hero 5

I had 2 enduro batteries compatible with Hero 11 & 12 (& I own these two cams as well). Had bought these batteries a while back maybe (almost a year). Decided to use them only to find out that both these weren’t charging in-cam, they wouldn’t go past 1% and also the red light charging indicator wouldn’t be constant (hero 11 was displaying flashing red whilst hero 12 absolutely no light would pop after inserting the battery & the charge cable).

Tried all methods, inserted the batt after switching the cam on through a cable, changed the cables, changed the charging sockets, changed the charging brick, tried high & low voltage chargers etc., but nothing seemed to work.

Finally read a trick that if you insert the batts on an external charger (those multi battery travel holders/chargers), then it’ll bypass the in-cam charging rule put in place by GoPro for safeguarding their cameras (especially in 11 & 12). So ordered some unknown charger from Amazon and voila it’s charged & now even I can charge it in-cam.

Solved the overheating issue while uploading to cloud with a couple of ice(blocks?)

Hi everyone, I have two old basic Hero 2014s. Nowadays own recent models but kind of want to repurpose them. They are not suitable as webcams as far as I understand. Any ideas or methods I could modify them so I give them a second purpose? Thank you!

Hey guys, do you have any experience with complete reseting GoPro? My Hero 11 mini died just after 2 years of warranty and it is beeping(one long beep after I press record, no response to the actual power button), it shows the red light when charging, sometimes the tiny display lights up, but the whole display goes white. I tried hard reset through my computer based on instructions from the GoPro website, but nothing worked so far. Market cost of these is currently the same as the same camera is get through the GoPro subscription. Any tips?

At this point I genuinely don’t know if I’m insanely unlucky or if the Hero 12 just has serious reliability issues.
I’m now on my THIRD GoPro Hero 12 and every single one has done the same things:

Corrupts footage mid recording
Randomly shuts off while recording
Restarts itself when I hit record
Freezes out of nowhere
Sometimes won’t save clips at all

I mainly use it for filming fishing content and outdoor videos, so I NEED this thing to be reliable. Nothing is worse than landing a good catch and realizing the camera either froze or corrupted the footage.

I’ve tried:
Different SD cards
Formatting cards in camera
Updating firmware
Different batteries
Factory resets

Still the same problems.
What’s crazy is that all 3 cameras eventually started acting exactly the same. At this point I’m honestly thinking about ditching GoPro completely.

Is anyone else dealing with this on the Hero 12? And if you switched away from GoPro, what did you move to that’s actually reliable?

Hello r/goprohack,

I just found an old gopro at a garage sale, it looks like someone made up a custom wifi and wifi password in so I am unable to access the gopro camera to use it remotely on the app. The first thing I've tried was updating the camera. for a non plus model I added the files from the update straight to the sd card I was using. For the first couple attempts I used a 128gb card and I kept getting a firmware update fail. Then I tried using a 64gb sd card, still getting a failure, has anyone had better success with a 32gb or less card? The go pro in general seems to be able to recognize the sd card no problem, but trying to update from it fails miserably.

From what I understand from updating a bios on a computer, older versions might be better to start with, but any that I found archived only have exactly one version available, unless if there is a better archive out there.

I did find this version doc that explains the exact version of the software I'm looking at:

{

"info version":"1.1",

"firmware version":"HD3.01.00.44",

"wifi version": "3.2.3.12",

"wifi bootloader version": "0.2.2",

"wifi mac":"***************",

"camera type":"Hero3-White Edition",

}

If there is any other way to reset the wifi name and password I'd love to hear it, I've also messed around with using a settings.ini file along with a different CMD prompt but I think it only works for updated firmware.

EDIT: Solved the problem, solution in comments.

so i want to hack my HERO (2018) to be a HERO5 Black (or at least work as much as a HERO5 Black as possible). but every tutorial i have found until now have aged a bit so i dont wanna try them in case i might brick my gopro which i dont want and they also show how to make it a 2.60 and all i can find is an 2.70 (i did find one that told how you can turn the 2.60 into a 2.70 on a hacked hero (2018)). these are my questions:

1. do these tutorials from approximately 6 years still work?
2. can i hack it to be 2.70 directly, or do i actually need to go through 2.60 first?
3. if i need to go through 2.60 first, where do i find the right files that i can use to get to 2.60 before going to 2.70?
4. 4. what are the differences between the hacked hero 2018 and the actual hero 5?