Your inspector is on the roof. You are in the driveway or at your desk, watching, and the picture stops.
This page is the troubleshooting list. It is short, because there are only about six things that actually happen, and most of them are not a problem with your phone.
If you have not tapped the link yet and want to know what it does first, what the link actually does is the inventory.
There is no sound
This is the most common one by a distance, and it is not a fault.
The video starts muted on purpose. Phone browsers will play a video without being asked, but they will not play audio without being asked, so a page that tried would simply fail to start at all. Starting silent is what lets the picture appear the instant you tap the link.
There is a button on the video that says Tap for sound. Tap it. The inspector has probably been talking the entire time.
Once you have tapped it, the button shrinks to a small speaker icon in the same place, so you can mute it again if somebody walks into the room.
The picture is soft, or there is a chip saying "Reduced quality"
Above the video there is a small label. It reads Video · HD, Video · Reduced quality, or Video · Connecting.
That is not decoration. It is telling you honestly which version of the picture you are receiving. Video quality moves with the connection at both ends — the inspector's phone on a roof, and yours. When either is weak, the system sends a smaller, softer picture rather than stopping altogether, because a continuous soft picture is more useful than a perfect one that keeps stalling.
What to do: nothing, usually. If you are on a phone with weak signal, moving somewhere better will help your end. Nothing you can do will help the inspector's end.
What it means for you: if the inspector is showing you something small — a hairline crack, the texture of a shingle — and the chip says Reduced quality, say so afterwards. They can take a full-resolution photograph of it, and those are saved with the inspection at proper detail regardless of how the live video looked.
It says "Weak signal" or "Reconnecting"
A second chip appears next to the first when the connection is struggling, and a line under the video says Weak signal · video may pause briefly.
This is the page warning you before anything goes wrong rather than after. The video may freeze for a few seconds and then catch up. That is normal on a roof, and the inspection is still running.
Leave the page open. It reconnects on its own.
It says "The connection was interrupted"
If the connection could not recover, the video is replaced by a message reading The connection was interrupted, with a Reconnect button.
Tap it. That is the whole fix. It checks whether the inspection is still running and picks the video back up if it is.
If it does not come back after two or three tries, the inspection may have ended, or the inspector may have lost service entirely — a roof, an attic and the far side of a large building are all places where a phone simply runs out of network. Nothing is broken at your end.
The picture froze but the page looks fine
This one is almost always the inspector's phone rather than yours.
If they take a call, switch apps to check something, or their screen locks, the phone can stop sending video for a moment. On iPhones in particular, answering a call can suspend the camera. You stay connected the whole time; there is just nothing arriving.
It resumes when they come back, usually within seconds. If it does not, they are probably standing somewhere with no signal and will reappear when they move.
Watching your inspection live on a phone that is doing other things
Two habits make the whole experience better, and neither is obvious.
Keep the page in front. If you switch to another app, your phone may stop the video to save battery. Coming back reconnects it, but you will have missed the bit in between. If you need to take a call, it is worth telling the inspector you will be away for a minute.
Do not close and reopen the link repeatedly. It works, but you lose a few seconds each time. Leaving it open through a wobble is faster than restarting.
If the moment you missed mattered, say so. The inspection is recorded, and the company keeps that recording — so "can you go back over the valley you were looking at when I dropped" is a completely normal thing to ask, either during the visit or after it.
It says the link cannot be opened
If the page says Cannot open rather than showing video, the link has stopped working. That is by design rather than a failure: the link expires when the inspector ends the inspection, and in any case after twelve hours.
Ask the inspector or the company to send a new one. It takes them a few seconds.
The same is true if you saved the link and came back to it the next day expecting to rewatch. It is a live window, not a video library. Why your phone never asks for your camera explains the design thinking behind that, and the rest of it, if you are curious why it works this way.
A step-by-step account of the whole inspection, from the inspector's side as well as yours, is on how it works.
InspectStream records what an inspector observed. It is not a public adjusting service and does not prepare, negotiate, or advise on insurance claims.