Question of the Month

Dennis Snider

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Question: How to Disable Your Webcam in Windows 10

Answer:
Most laptops nowadays come with built-in webcams. These cameras are a great way to add some personability to video calls and conferences. With that being said, there’s a lot of concern that those webcams can be accessed by unknown parties. Remember the picture of Mark Zuckerberg with the post-it note over his webcam in the background? It seems that many people are concerned about whether or not these devices can be accessed, and with good reason.
The problem with the post-it note solution is that you could leave residue on the camera and this affects its quality if you do decide to use it. Plus, it doesn’t look great!
Windows 10 gives you a far more elegant solution to disable your webcam.

Using Device Manager
You can open up Device Manager in a number of ways, the quickest is to open the Run dialog box and type in “devmgmt.msc”, you can also ask Cortana to open Device Manager for you.
You’ll see a list of devices that make up your laptop. You’ll see keyboards, displays, batteries, and much more.
Within this list of devices, you’ll see a section for cameras. You should click it and the list will expand, presenting you with a comprehensive list of all the cameras attached to your machine. In most cases, this will most probably just be one!

Once you right-click on the camera and you’ll see a list of options appear such as update drivers, check the properties, and also disable the device. If you click the disable option, the webcam will be disabled and will not be capable of processing images. If you want to reenable the webcam you can follow the same steps above and simply enable the webcam.