Find which app is using your camera or microphone

Windows 11/10 shows indicators when devices are in use:

• Camera icon appears in the taskbar when webcam is active
• Microphone icon appears when mic is being accessed
• Go to Settings → Privacy & security → Camera (or Microphone) to see recent app activity

macOS shows clear indicators in the menu bar:

• Green dot — camera is in use
• Orange dot — microphone is in use
• Click the Control Center icon to see which app is using the device

Check device usage from terminal:

# See which process is using the camera
fuser /dev/video0

# See which process is using audio
fuser /dev/snd/*

# Get detailed process info
lsof /dev/video0

Open PowerShell as Administrator:

# List processes with camera access
Get-Process | Where-Object {$_.Modules.ModuleName -match "camera"}

# Check for processes using media devices
Get-Process | Where-Object {$_.MainWindowTitle -ne ""} | Select-Object ProcessName, MainWindowTitle

Use these Terminal commands:

# Find processes using camera
lsof | grep "AppleCamera\|iSight\|VDC"

# Find processes using microphone
lsof | grep "coreaudio"

# Force quit camera assistant (releases camera)
sudo killall VDCAssistant
sudo killall AppleCameraAssistant

Linux provides direct access to device information:

# Find process using webcam
fuser -v /dev/video0

# Find process using audio devices
fuser -v /dev/snd/*

# Kill process using camera (replace PID)
kill -9 $(fuser /dev/video0 2>/dev/null)

# List all video devices
v4l2-ctl --list-devices