Android makes it easy to find out if any apps are using the camera or microphone on your device, even if they're trying to sneakily use them in the background. In this short guide, we'll show you how to find out if any apps are using your camera or microphone, how to find out which apps they are, and how to stop them from doing it again.

Android's Privacy Indicators Appear in the Status Bar

When an app tries to use your device's camera or microphone in Android, you will immediately see a green indicator in the top-right corner of the status bar. If you see a green dot here, then you know an app on your device is using the camera or microphone.

To get more details, swipe down to open the Quick Settings, then tap the Camera or Microphone icon to go to the Security & Privacy settings on your device. From here, you should be able to see which apps have recently used the camera or microphone on your Android device.

To stop that app from doing so in the future, just tap it and hit Remove permissions for this app. Alternatively, select Manage permissions and set the Camera or Microphone permission to Don't allow.

The exact settings will vary depending on your version of Android, but the green indicator will be present in all of them.

Although the green dot should appear for pretty much every app that's trying to listen in or spy on you, you should know that it won't appear when Google is listening to you for "OK, Google."

Google introduced these Privacy Indicators with Android 12, so you'll just need to update your Android device to ensure you're running Android 12 or later to get this feature.

Adjust App Permissions to Make Android More Secure

Out of the millions of apps on the Google Play Store, there will always be a few malicious ones who will try to gain unwanted access to the camera app or the microphone. Luckily, Android makes it pretty easy to stop these attempts by revoking camera or microphone permission for any apps that don't need it. This is just one of several ways you can make your Android device as secure as possible.