Turning Off Camera

Question

My Asus Zenbook has a camera button to turn the camera on and off.

It used to work, but now, it's only saying the camera is on each time I press the button.

I've tried restarting the laptop a few times to see if it resets it, but to no avail. My camera is now on all the time, and I fear for my privacy.

Instead of being able to deactivate my camera easily, I now need to go to Settings each time in order to disable it.

What do I do now?

Answer 1

Hi N/A,

Since the camera shortcut is still showing the on-screen notification but is no longer disabling the webcam, the issue may be with the ASUS hotkey utility or the device's camera control layer rather than the camera itself.

As a workaround, you can temporarily disable the camera at the device level:

1. Press Windows + X and open Device Manager.
2. Expand Cameras.
3. Right-click your webcam and select Disable device.
4. Restart the PC and test whether the camera remains unavailable to apps.

If this works, it helps confirm that Windows is detecting the camera correctly and that the problem is more likely related to the ASUS camera-toggle feature. In that case, checking for updates to ASUS System Control Interface, ASUS Keyboard Hotkeys, or related utilities from ASUS Support would be the next step.

I understand your privacy concern, and disabling the camera in Device Manager provides a reliable temporary safeguard while investigating the toggle-key behavior.

Let me know if you need further assistance, feel free to ask me by clicking "Add Comment" or "Add Answer" if you cannot add comment so your response will be visible. Thanks for your effort.

---

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

Answer 2

Hi @N/A

The camera button is likely aging and is now defective.

Usually, there is a light on the camera to show you if it's on or off.

Most of the time even the camera button is now on all the time, there's nothing using the camera, this can be proven in Settings, if will tell you that an app is using your camera in settings.

Best regards,

Nanta