Display an alert notification on your screen whenever your computer’s webcam is turned on or off.
In principle, when your PC’s webcam is activated, a small colored LED is automatically lit next to it (at least on recent machines) and goes out once the webcam is deactivated.
To complete this system, it is possible to force Windows 10 to display a notification directly on the screen alerting you each time the camera connected to your computer is turned on or off. To do this, you have to go to the registry editor of the operating system in order to modify a value normally intended for machines without an LED indicator on the webcam.
1. Open Registry Editor
Start by opening the Windows Registry Editor. To do this, use the Windows + R keyboard shortcut to open the Run window, then in the Open field, type Regedit, and validate by clicking OK.
2. Access the registry key
In the Registry Editor window that appears, copy and paste the path to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE Microsoft OEM Device Capture
3. Modify the value of the key
Now double click on the NoPhysicalCameraLED DWORD value. In the Modify 32-bit DWORD value window that appears, in the Value data line, replace the 0 by 1 and validate by clicking OK.
Then restart your machine for your changes to be taken into account by the operating system. Then open a program requiring access to the webcam.
If all goes according to plan, Windows 10 should automatically display an alert notification on the screen, indicating that the webcam connected to your PC is active (On), or deactivated (Off).