Something is using my microphone?

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Win10 21h1.   I happened to notice that there’s a little “microphone” icon in my system tray.  Amusing, since my PC doesn’t *have* a microphone, but curious: I click on it and it opens the settings page for the microphone and confirms that it is “off” .   And I scanned the list and all of the listed programs are set to “NO”.   So two things come to mine; what *IS* it that is trying to use my microphone?  And in the settings page it says “Microphone access for this device is on”. I assume “device” means my PC, but why/what is “on” and how to turn it off.

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Open Settings > System > Sounds and click Manage sound devices in the right-hand panel.

Whatever’s using the mic will be listed under Input Devices and you can click on it to disable it.

BTW, if your PC’s a laptop it might very well have a mic even though you think it doesn’t.

I was “absolutely positive” my HP laptop had no mic but, while testing some on-line meeting software with my uncle last month, I was very surprised to find that it actually does have one (the software asked if it could access my mic?!?!)

The catch was, unlike yours, the system tray mic icon was hidden so I never realized the PC actually had one.

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berniec

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That did it.  i had a random driver that was trying to “listen” to a non-existent microphone.

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