Windows 11 is being tested with per-app camera and microphone permissions for ordinary desktop programs, closing a gap that has existed since Microsoft first split its privacy model in two. The controls turned up in Windows Insider Preview Build 26340.9212, released to the Experimental channel on 17 August 2026. Microsoft has not announced them, and they do not appear in that build’s release notes.
What the new Windows 11 privacy controls change
Right now, Windows 11 treats software differently depending on where it came from. Apps installed from the Microsoft Store get their own individual permission switches, so you can hand a webcam to one Store app and deny it to another. Everything else — browsers, chat clients, games, and the overwhelming majority of what people actually install — falls under a single blanket toggle per sensor, such as Let desktop apps access your microphone.
That is an all-or-nothing bargain. Leave it on so Discord can hear you, and every other program on the machine keeps the same standing permission. Turn it off, and you break the one app you wanted working.
In the Experimental build, individual Win32 programs appear in the Settings privacy panel with their own toggles, alongside Store apps. Reporting on the discovery says the same treatment extends to location and voice activation, not just camera and microphone. Windows Latest, which tested the build, reports that a desktop app reaching for the microphone or camera for the first time now triggers a centred system dialog asking whether to allow it — the sort of “allow or deny” prompt iPhone and Android users have had for well over a decade, and something Win32 apps did not raise on their own before.
Spotted by a tester, not announced by Microsoft
The feature was found by X user @jakub25050, who posted screenshots of the new toggles on 18 August. The post read:
Huge changes are coming to Windows 11 privacy & security.
Microsoft’s release notes for build 26340.9212 carry no entry for the privacy controls at all; the announcement covers a redesigned File Explorer context menu, Emoji 17.0 support and renewed flight certificates instead. Several Insiders replying to the post said the toggles had not shown up on their own machines, which is consistent with Microsoft’s habit of switching features on for a slice of testers first.
Treat this as unconfirmed. Microsoft has made no public statement about the feature and has tied it to no release. Experimental-channel features regularly get redesigned, delayed, or quietly dropped, and we would not read anything into a timeline until Microsoft says something.
It is also worth naming what this is: a fix for a design decision Microsoft made itself. Store apps got granular permissions years ago because the Store’s app model made it easy. Desktop apps — the ones most people run — were left with a switch that is effectively unusable if you want to be selective. Mobile platforms solved this before Windows 10 shipped.
What you can do on a normal PC today
Nothing here has reached stable Windows 11, and there is no supported way to force it on. What you can do now is audit which programs have been using your sensors, because Windows already keeps that log:
- Open Settings and go to Privacy & security.
- Select Camera, Microphone, or Location.
- Expand the recent-activity list to see which apps have used that sensor and when.
- Use the desktop-apps toggle to cut access entirely if something on the list surprises you — remembering it is still all-or-nothing until this feature ships.
If you want to try the per-app toggles yourself, they require enrolment in the Windows Insider Program’s Experimental channel on build 26340.9212 or later — and even then they may not appear. That is not a channel to put a machine you rely on. We would wait for this one to reach Beta before touching it, and we will cover it again if and when Microsoft confirms it.
Source: original discovery by @jakub25050, via BetaNews and Windows Latest. Build details from the Windows Insider Blog. See also our earlier post on the Windows 11 right-click menu customise page in preview builds.
