Teams turns on my camera for every meeting

Question

Every time I join a meeting, my camera turns on. I can't find out how to fix this. Video Settings doesn't seem to have anything for that.

Is this a Teams setup managed by a company or enterprise, or a personal account? The Teams join meeting panel usually has a place to turn it off. Is this not working? What research have you done? Which OS? Have you gone to Camera Privacy Settings and told Teams it isn't allowed to use your camera? — music2myear, Jul 31 '23 at 18:58
By company. I didn't notice anything in the join panel. Windows. I don't want to totally disable the camera... I just don't want it to turn on by default... I want to be able to click the Video icon to turn it on. — JoelFan, Jul 31 '23 at 19:03
postit note over the camera, remove to enable camera when desired. Works for teams, hackers and everything else. — Aequitas, Aug 02 '23 at 05:22

score 28 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 01 '23 at 19:44

I think I have found the answer, thanks to a comment by @music2myyear above. They pointed out that there is an option to choose the camera status on the Join dialog.

It turns out that this dialog actually "remembers" the setting! All I needed to do was turn it off on the Join dialog one time and it defaulted to "off" for subsequent meetings.

(I had apparently been clicking right past that option without noticing it. Perhaps at one point in the past I clicked the camera toggle on that dialog)

[The developer in me, knowing a bit about the tech behind this app (Electron) suspects this may have not been an intentional design feature. I'm thinking the dialog resource itself persists the state of that toggle, so whenever the dialog comes up, it stays in the last state it was switched to.]

IMO, the Join dialog is the most practical place to allow the user to configure. I think of it more like that screen allows for setting the configuration value, but (unfortunately) the Preferences screen does not. — trebor, Aug 16 '23 at 00:21

score 11 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 31 '23 at 19:25

Microsoft calls it a feature in the article Turn off automatic video in a call in Microsoft Teams :

Video is turned on automatically when you join or are called from an unscheduled meeting in a channel. You can't change these video settings, but you can turn off your video once you're in the call if you don't need it.

It works like this :

Call type	Video setting
Unscheduled meeting	Video on
Group or 1:1 call from a chat	Asks to join video
Scheduled meeting	Video off

The article How to Turn Off Camera in Microsoft Teams details the various means of turning video off. (The user interface of Teams may change, but the options should remain available in some form.)

When joining a meeting from the Channel dashboard, you can turn off the camera before joining when choosing the audio and video settings for the meeting.
You can also turn the camera off from within the meeting at any time by clicking on the ‘camera’ icon on the toolbar.
When invited to join a meeting and receiving the call, you can choose ‘Voice only’ :

The article notes that people have been known to use a black electrical tape to cover the camera, or use an anti-virus that prevents apps from using the webcam without permission.

Microsoft has perhaps changed this default without updating the documentation. But you could try to uninstall and reinstall Teams, to see if it goes back to the documented default of video off. On the other hand, the creator of the meeting also has some control over this setting, so it could be unconnected to Teams itself. — harrymc, Aug 01 '23 at 10:19
I'm using the latest version afaik, `You have Microsoft Teams Version 1.6.00.18681 (64-bit). It was last updated on 7/11/2023.` and my *scheduled* meetings do start with **video disabled** — chiliNUT, Aug 01 '23 at 16:25

MonkeyZeus · Answer 3 · 2023-08-02T14:28:52.400

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Teams is a mixed bag of nuts and it is ever-changing since it's an Electron app so it doesn't have to ask your permission to update.

The best solution is a physical one.

Look into buying a webcam cover and get in the habit of covering your camera after you're done using it.

If a webcam cover is too thick then consider blue painters tape which has black electrical tape on the back of it. The blue tap's adhesive should not leave residue on the webcam and the electrical tape would have good blackout properties.

This solution also has the benefit of being universal. You are no longer at the mercy of having to learn other apps' settings like Webex or Zoom.

And of course, turn off your camera via software once the meeting starts to save some bandwidth.

edited Aug 02 '23 at 14:28

answered Aug 01 '23 at 11:56

MonkeyZeus

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Strongly agree with this. Default settings change, you switch apps, blah blah blah. Last thing anybody needs is being on camera when they don't realize it. Cover it up manually and uncover it when you actually want to. Note that this is so common you won't even need to explain why your "video" is a black screen -- just "oops, left my camera cover on from earlier" and you're done. – Richard Rast Aug 01 '23 at 13:11
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Note that plastic webcam covers can't be used on some machines. For example, there were so many reports of cracked screens resulting from webcam covers on recent MacBooks, which don't have enough clearance for a cover when closed, that Apple issued [a warning](https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT211148) about them. — But the principle of a physical barrier is still a good one; I find a simple sticky note works fine, if not as convenient. – gidds Aug 01 '23 at 14:50
For desktop machines with an external USB webcam, you can get USB cables with a physical switch. – Skrrp Aug 01 '23 at 17:07
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@gidds Good ol' Apple; staying true to "[You're using our equipment wrong!](https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/)" Instead of "We've built an effing slide mechanism for the camera like any sane business laptop has. – MonkeyZeus Aug 01 '23 at 19:49
@MonkeyZeus, the long-standing culture at Apple is to resist having any hardware that is not ultimately under software control – JoelFan Aug 01 '23 at 19:51
The "physical cover" solution has a serious UX flaw... the user needs to remember to "re-cover" the camera after every use – JoelFan Aug 01 '23 at 19:52
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@JoelFan I'd say your current issue with Teams is a bigger UX issue. If you so strongly dislike the ubiquity of the solution then enjoy configuring all your apps; assuming they allow you to. – MonkeyZeus Aug 01 '23 at 20:00
While there's nothing _wrong_ with this answer, note it only solves half the problem - you're still wasting bandwidth until you use the Off switch. – Toby Speight Aug 02 '23 at 09:21
@TobySpeight Good call! How much bandwidth does it take to transmit a compressed black image? – MonkeyZeus Aug 02 '23 at 11:45
I don't know quantitatively (and it will surely change over time if the product's codecs change), but I would say that it's somewhere between zero and that of a moving image. At a rough (and uninformed) guess, I'd suggest same order of magnitude as speech over a reasonable audio codec. Which would make your usage twice what it needs to be. – Toby Speight Aug 02 '23 at 11:51
I actually prefer non-blackout tape, just diffusing as painters tape does, or coloured electrical tape. That makes it easier to see whether the camera is enabled in the preview, while still not producing a meaningful image. In many apps the camera-off placeholder is different to a camera streaming blackness anyway; I think in Teams that's the case because with the camera disabled the name in centred, unlike when it's streaming (but that's the Linux version of Teams) – Chris H Aug 02 '23 at 14:13
@TobySpeight Per https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/r2qben/does_video_of_just_black_screen_with_music_take/ the data savings of a blank video video feed is significant so forgetting to turn off video is probably negligible, or at least it's far less data than having no blackout. – MonkeyZeus Aug 02 '23 at 14:25
A trimmed Post-It note works just as well – MPW Aug 03 '23 at 15:48
@MPW Depends on desired permanence and jankiness tolerance. – MonkeyZeus Aug 04 '23 at 16:37

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 10 '23 at 15:35

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I see aquitas gave you the best answer - the post-it note over the cam. But it tends to hang over the top of the screen.

This is what I did before I discovered a very cheap webcam cover. The first modification I make to every work laptop I get is to attach the webcam cover. I am fairly paranoid about my employer turning on the webcam when I don't notice. A few years back a high school in PA assigned every student a laptop to take home. "To make sure it hadn't been stolen" the school would remotely activate the webcams, effectively spying on students in their bedrooms.

Check out "Webam cover slider" on Amazon.

answered Aug 10 '23 at 15:35

Jacob Salomon

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The flaw of covers is that you forget to close them after each use. It would be nice if there was a smart cover that automatically closed at the end of calls, or at least after a certain amount of time. – JoelFan Aug 10 '23 at 19:22
I would have thought that Remote activation can only work if they have installed some sort of spyware. Plus one for finding them. – Rohit Gupta Aug 10 '23 at 20:21
To JoelFan: These are simple, cheap, super-thin stick-on thingies you stick on with the hole over the webcam lens and slide the cover over the hole. To add electronics and gears to automatically cover the hole is too much to ask. To Rohit: Yes, it is spyware, like many employers install to track their equipment. But at least they tend to tell the employee: "We entrust you with our property but can monitor your activity." But no spyware can defeat a simple stick-on cover. (Or the simpler, cheaper sticky-note.) – Jacob Salomon Aug 24 '23 at 15:24

Teams turns on my camera for every meeting

4 Answers4