Windows 11's new privacy audit feature is incredibly useful

Microsoft is developing a new privacy dashboard for Windows 11 in the Settings app, where you can see exactly which apps or tools have access to sensitive hardware features like the camera, microphone, or location. You can proactively 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 your camera, location, or microphone, and when. It's not perfect, as the feature won't let you know when a certain driver is using a hardware feature, but it's still very useful.

Hardware permissions can be a little confusing on Windows 10, and Microsoft doesn't give away much information about app usage. While you can see which application is using the microphone directly on the taskbar, you can't view a list of applications that have previously accessed the hardware feature.

As you can see in the screenshot below, Windows 11’s new privacy dashboard is very useful, and getting there isn’t difficult once you know where to look.

To access this feature, open Settings and go to Privacy & Security > App Permissions.

#This page lets you choose between hardware such as cameras, locations, and microphones. If you select "Camera," you can view its "Recent Activity" by clicking on the drop-down menu, as shown in the screenshot below.

This menu allows you to browse the timeline of camera usage. Likewise, you can monitor application request activity for other hardware features, such as microphone or location.

You'll find obvious things like Microsoft Edge using your location and Microsoft Teams using your microphone, but you might see more surprising things like Third-party apps silently access the location while running in the background.

As mentioned at the beginning, this feature does not let you know when a specific process or driver gained access to certain permissions, such as location or microphone access. These hardware features are crucial because they can be misused to spy on your location or what you are doing with your camera or microphone.

Windows has never had such useful privacy tools, but it looks like Microsoft is taking steps to improve privacy controls in the operating system. Google added a similar feature in the Android 12 version, and Google's implementation is far from perfect.

In addition to new privacy controls, Microsoft is also exploring new taskbar features for the operating system, including dynamic updates.

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