Microsoft has been on a roll as of lately when it comes to lifting arbitrary, extremely limiting restriction from Windows 11. The latest one is a restriction on webcam usage that you’ve probably come across a few times.
Microsoft is set to change up how Windows 11 handles webcam access, lifting a restriction that has been in place for years. Currently, only one app at a time can utilize the webcam, a limitation rooted in the historical constraints of Windows’ video capture APIs and hardware capabilities. This often led to frustrating situations where you were forced to close one app to use the camera in another. This became more and more annoying as more of our daily lives required webcam use, from online meetings to video calls with friends and family.
Now, though, preview builds of Windows 11 24H2 introduce something called “multi-app camera” support. This allows multiple video apps to access the webcam concurrently, eliminating the need to constantly switch between them. However, whenever you do do this, camera settings like brightness will then be controlled centrally from a dedicated settings page. Rather than being a restriction that’s just lifted for everyone, like the newly-updated behavior for FAT32 partitions, this is a toggle that you need to turn on if you want to use your webcam across multiple apps. A similar change, but for audio handling, was also recently rolled out, where Windows now supports multiple apps using the microphone and speaker simultaneously.
In addition to multi-app camera support, Windows 11 is also getting a new camera troubleshooting feature and is reportedly testing AI integration for the camera. While the exact timeline for these features to reach the public remains unclear, Microsoft is promising a more versatile and user-friendly camera experience in the future.
This is available in Insider previews right now, but you’ll need to wait a while more if you don’t want to deal with beta-grade software.
Source: WindowsLatest
