How to Enable Camera in Use Notification in Windows 11

In addition to the LED light, you can enable the a camera in use notification in Windows 11.  Every time an app will access it, you will see a notification in the center of the desktop. It will also be of help when the LED light is covered with something, e.g. with your finger, on in the bright environment.

Finally, the LED camera indicator may be simply broken, so desktop notification is its in-place replacement.

Starting in Windows 10, Microsoft has added an on-screen display notifications for the Camera that will appear every time you turn on or off the webcam. It was created specially for devices that do not have the LED option. If Windows cannot detect the physical LED light, it will show the notification. But you can force-enable it by applying a simple Registry tweak in addition to the existing LED light option.

The following screenshot shows how such notification look like.

So, to enable or disable Camera on and Camera off desktop notifications, do the following.

Enable Camera On and Off notifications in Windows 11

1. Press Win + R to open the Run box, type regedit and hit Enter to open the Registry Editor app.
2. Go to the following Registry key.
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\OEM\Device\Capture. You can simply copy and paste this path to the address bar of Regedit.
3. Right-click the Capture folder in the left pane, and select New >Dword (32-Bit) value from the menu. Name the new value as NoPhysicalCameraLED. If you already have this value, then go to the next step.
4. Set its value data to 1 to enable OSD notifications for Camera.
5. A value data of 0 to disable OSD notifications for Camera.

You are done!

Now, you can open some app that uses Camera. The inbox "Camera" is good enough to test the changes you made. If you still do not see the notification, then restart Windows 11.

Ready-to-use REG files

To save your time and avoid the manual Registry editing, you can get the ready-to-use Registry files.

Download the ZIP archive from this link. Extract the files to any folder of your choice. Now, open (double-click) the Enable Camera On-Off Osd.reg file. You will see the User Account Control prompt, which you need to allow.

Finally, click "Yes" in the Registry Editor's prompt to merge the file content. Now you have the notification enabled!

The undo tweak, Disable Camera On-Off Osd.reg, is also included in the archive.

That's it!