A new Privacy panel is coming to the Windows 11 Settings app. It allows users to visually see exactly which applications or tools are accessing which sensitive hardware features, such as camera, microphone or location. You can actively monitor usage or see what they are doing.
Microsoft is integrating the new Privacy Dashboard into the existing Privacy & Security page in Settings. You can see a list of apps that are using the camera, location, or microphone, and when they are. It’s not perfect at this stage, as the feature doesn’t let you know when a certain driver is using a hardware feature, but it’s useful.
Hardware permissions can be a bit confusing on Windows 10, and Microsoft doesn’t give away much information about app usage. While you can see which app is using the microphone directly on the taskbar, you can’t see a list of apps that have previously accessed the hardware feature.
As you can see in the screenshot below, Windows 11’s new privacy dashboard is very useful. To access this feature, open Settings and go to Privacy & Security > App Permissions.
This page lets you choose between hardware such as camera, location, and microphone. If you select “Camera”, you can view its “Recent Activity” by clicking the drop-down menu, as shown in the image below.
This menu allows you to browse the timeline used by the camera. Likewise, you can monitor application request activity for other hardware capabilities, such as a microphone or location.
You’ll find obvious things like Microsoft Edge using your location, Microsoft Teams using your microphone, etc., but you might see more surprising things like third-party apps quietly accessing the location while they’re running in the background.
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