Presence detection is a broad time period which means your gadget can inform once you’re utilizing it, and in some instances, even whether or not or not you’re paying consideration. It’s a great tool — for instance, Windows Hello webcams use easy face scanning to switch login passwords — nevertheless it additionally has some privateness points related to it. To assist handle them, Microsoft is exposing a “Presence sensing” setting within the newest beta model of Windows 11.

Bleeping Computer reports that the setting has appeared within the Privacy & Security menu of Windows 11 model 22624.1610, now accessible within the Beta channel to Insider testers. The toggle solely applies to Windows and apps that decision instantly on the HumanPresenceSensor collection of APIs. That implies that third-party instruments utilizing a proprietary system may have the ability to have interaction in presence detection utilizing cameras, microphones, or different sensors even when the setting is disabled.

Presence detection can be utilized for issues like logging in or conserving the display energetic by detecting eye movement, or mechanically locking it once you step away. But it’s additionally potential to report extra delicate knowledge, like precisely what number of minutes a distant employee spends away from their desk per day. Presence sensing can also be a reasonably intensive background course of for {hardware} — disabling it’d prevent some battery life or CPU energy, relying on the way it’s being applied.

Whether or not the privateness setting will make it to a full launch of Windows 11 stays to be seen. But with increasingly laptops and tablets together with {hardware} able to presence sensing, it looks as if a sensible inclusion for consumer privateness.