How to software disable your laptop's camera in Windows 10

To avoid being spied on, or for simple security to know when an application has access to the camera, today we explain how to disable the camera on our Windows 10 computer.

Either an external webcam or a camera embedded in the laptop's chassis, but it is convenient to control the privacy options. There are many ways to access a laptop webcam, and cybercriminals know them all.

Throughout this text, we are going to indicate different ways to disable the camera. We have compiled a series of tricks, from using an external program to doing it from the native Windows 10 settings.

All the options are very easy since there are only a couple of steps in which we must pay attention to disable the camera of our computer:

Prevent the webcam from staying on

Through an external program, and very simple, we can know at all times if our camera is on or off. It works with all types of Windows 10 computers, from a Surface Pro laptop to a tower computer or a Windows 10 tablet.

Cover the webcam lens

We have seen this gesture in many series, movies, and articles with privacy and security advice, but surely many of us have not yet put them into practice.

Here we have several options, or buy a webcam with a cover, in case of using an external webcam or buy some type of sticker with a slider design to cover the camera of our laptop. At Amazon, we have a multitude of options at a great price.

The other option we have, in case we have an external webcam, is to unplug it when we are not using it. In order to do this, multi USB devices with a switch come in handy, in this way we can turn it on and off depending on what we need.

Change webcam permissions in Windows 10

In the Windows 10 configuration, there are a series of options where the webcam is activated as standard and we can disable all of them to block automatic access to the camera on our computer.

• Enter Settings, then Privacy, and finally Camera.
• Where it says "Access to the camera for this device is activated", click on Change and deactivate it.
• When we want to use the camera, we will have to accept the permission that will appear on the screen.

Disable the camera to avoid hacks

There are other options where they allow us to leave the webcam unusable, that is, as a mere decoration object. This option can be useful for a laptop, and when we need a webcam, we use the external one or use our own mobile. In this way, we will avoid being hacked through the webcam. And if we want to enable it again, we follow the same steps:

• Search for "Managed devices" in the Windows 10 search bar.
• Press on Manage Devices and there look for cameras.
• Now, double click and when we see the WEBCAM option we make another two clicks.
• We enter the Controller tab and click on Disable device.

And these are all the available and simple ways to disable the webcam, either an external one or one that is already installed on our monitor or laptop.