Enable Camera On/Off Indicator Notification in Windows 11

If you want to receive an automatic notification pop-up on your Windows 11 Desktop whenever an application tries to access your device camera (webcam), this article will help you. It’s a hidden secret feature which is disabled by default and this article will help you in enabling it.

Once you follow this tutorial and an app tries to access the Camera attached to your computer, Windows 11 will display a notification message in form of a small fly-out or popup as shown in following screenshot:

When the app uses your Camera, Windows 11 will display “Camera On” notification and when the app stops using your Camera, Windows 11 will display “Camera Off” notification.

It’ll be a very helpful feature for privacy concerned users. You’ll get instant notification whenever your device camera is being used.

Recently one reader asked me following question related to camera access issue:

That’s true. Windows 11 shows a privacy indicator icon in the Taskbar notification area (or system tray) whenever an app is accessing the microphone as shown in following screenshot:

But Windows 11 doesn’t show any indicator icon for Camera access. It’s by design as most of the Camera come with a built-in indicator LED to let users know when the Camera is being used.

Enable Camera Privacy Indicator Notification in Windows 11

If you want to receive “Camera On/Off” notification pop-ups as shown above in your Windows 11 device whenever an app uses your device Camera, following steps will help you:

1. Press WIN+R keys together to launch RUN dialog box. Now type regedit and press Enter. It’ll open Registry Editor.

2. Now go to following key:

3. In right-side pane, you’ll see following DWORD: NoPhysicalCameraLED

NoPhysicalCameraLED dword is set to 0 by default which means Windows 11 will consider that your device Camera has its own physical LED and will not show notification pop-up.

Double-click on NoPhysicalCameraLED and change its value to 1 to force Windows 11 to display Camera On/Off notification pop-ups.

That’s it. Now Windows 11 will start showing notifications to indicate Camera On or Off status whenever any app tries to access your device Camera.

You may need to restart your device to apply the registry changes.

Registry Script to Automatically Enable Camera On/Off Notifications in Windows 11

If you don’t want to modify registry yourself, we have created ready-made Registry script file for you to apply the required Registry tweak automatically.

Download following ZIP file, extract it using 7-Zip or other file archive utilities and run the extracted REG file:

The script file will ask for confirmation, accept it.

The ZIP file also contains UNDO file to remove Camera On/Off notifications in your Windows 11 device.

Check Which Apps Used Your Device Camera in Windows 11

The Camera on/off notification disappears automatically after a few seconds. To check which app tried to access your device Camera, do as following:

1. Open Settings app from Start Menu or press WIN+I keys together to direct open Settings app.

2. Now click on “Privacy & Security” section in left-side pane and in right-side pane, scroll down and click on Camera option present under App permissions section.

3. Again scroll down and look for Recent Activities section as shown in following screenshot:

This section contains a log or record of all apps that accessed your camera in last 7 days.

In future, if you decide to remove Camera on/off notifications pop-ups, change the value of above mentioned dword NoPhysicalCameraLED to 0 again.

Thanks to Neowin for sharing it…

Also Check:

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[Tip] Tweak Microsoft Office 2013 Settings to Improve Your Privacy

[Tips] Tweak Opera Web Browser Settings to Improve Your Privacy

[CCleaner Tip] Improve Privacy by Disabling Usage Data Collection and Reporting