Windows may finally let you tell one app no about the microphone

Your phone has worked this way for over a decade. An app asks for the microphone, you say yes or no, and the answer applies to that app and nothing else. On Windows, ordinary desktop programs have always been governed by one switch: "Let desktop apps access your microphone." On for the video call software means on for everything, including whatever you installed in 2019 and forgot about.

That may be changing. Build 26340.9212, pushed to the Experimental Insider channel on 17 August, contains per-app permission toggles for traditional Win32 desktop programs - camera, microphone, location and voice activation, each controllable one application at a time. When a program asks for the camera for the first time, a system dialog appears in the middle of the screen and you decide on the spot. After that, Settings lists programs individually rather than bundling them under a single master switch.

Microsoft announced none of it. An Insider spotted the toggles sitting in Settings and several outlets confirmed them; they're absent from the release notes, and not everyone on that build can even see them. The Experimental channel is where Microsoft tries ideas it may never ship, so this could be redesigned, delayed, or quietly dropped.

It's still worth knowing about, because the current arrangement is genuinely poor and most people have no idea how blunt that one toggle is. Until something better arrives, the privacy page in Windows Settings is the only place to check - and Tendvane's Privacy and accounts check reads through those settings for you and reports which ones are currently switched on.