Thankfully, it’s now much easier to disable the camera in Windows 11 because of its “Cameras” settings page, which lets you quickly turn on or off the camera if you need to. This is different to the “privacy settings” for your webcam, which only lets you restrict or allow access to certain apps. We’ll be showing you both this method and the “old” Windows 10 method using Device Manager so you can use whichever works best for you.
How to Turn Off a Camera in Windows 11 Webcam Settings
How to Disable a Camera with Device Manager on Windows 11 or Windows 10
How to Enable a Camera on Windows 11 via Webcam Settings
How to Enable a Camera using Device Manager
If your Windows 10 or Windows 11 camera not disabled but still won’t work, you may instead want to read our dedicated camera troubleshooting guide. It’ll show you 7 ways to fix your camera.
Extra: How to Stop Apps from Running in the Background in Windows 11
To better protect your privacy, you can also tweak whether apps can run in the background in Windows 11. This will allow you to be sure they aren’t sending data back to some remote server when you aren’t using them.
