Abstract The objective of this paper is to reveal the influence of different surface geometric conditions on the dynamic behavior characteristics of a laser-induced bubble collapse. A high-speed camera system was used to record the oscillation process of the laser-induced bubble on plane solid walls with different roughness and a wall containing reentrant cavities full of water or gas. The focus is on the quantitative analysis of the morphological characteristics of the cavitation bubble near the solid wall under different surface forms during the first two oscillation periods. The results show that the dimensionless ratio γ, defined as the distance from the center of the bubble to the wall divided by the maximum radius of the bubble, has a great influence on the change of the cavitation shape in the direction of the vertical wall. Different surface geometries without gas in our cases have no significant effect on the collapse time of cavitation bubbles. While for the surface containing gas, the direction of movement of the bubble accompanying the microjet will greatly change during the collapse of the cavitation bubble, and the collapse time seems to be independent of the dimensionless ratio γ. These achievements shed the light for engineering to avoid the damage of the microjet caused by designing suitable surface geometry.