How to make applications on your Windows 10 laptop use the camera and microphone of your webcam

One of the demo stations in my office needs to run applications that receive video and voice from the user. Since we have several Windows 10 laptop lying around, we decided to use one to run the applications.

Given that the Windows 10 laptop is to be hidden in a cabinet, I need to use an external webcam with microphone.

However, the integrated camera and microphone can be chosen by the applications that I run on that laptop.

So how can we make applications on a Windows 10 laptop to use the camera and microphone of an external webcam?

This post shows how I made applications on my Windows 10 laptop use the camera and microphone of my Logitech C525 HD Webcam.

Connect the USB webcam to the Windows 10 laptop

Before continuing, make sure that you connect your USB webcam to your Windows 10 laptop.

After you had connected your USB webcam, Windows 10 should set it up for you automatically:

Windows 10 notification that Logitech HD Webcam C525 is set up and ready to go

Disable the integrated camera of my Windows 10 laptop

The best way for applications to use your external camera is to make sure that it is the only active one. In order for that to happen, I first disable the integrated camera of my Windows 10 laptop.

So how did I disable the integrated camera of my Windows 10 laptop?

First, I looked for Device Manager:

Finding device manager with windows search

Once Device Manager is started, I looked for the integrated camera under Cameras and disabled it:

Disable integrated camera on Windows 10 laptop

When Windows 10 prompted that disabling this device will cause it to stop functioning, I clicked Yes.

Once I had done so, applications had to use my external camera since it is the only choice.

Disable integrated microphone

Next, I proceed to disable the integrated microphone.

In order to do so, I first open the Settings App:

Finding Settings App on Windows 10

Once the Settings App starts, I clicked on System:

Windows 10 Settings App with System highlighted

Inside the System submenu, I clicked on Sound from the left:

Sound settings on Windows 10 with Microphone (Conexand SmartAudio HD) selected as input device

After making sure that my integrated microphone is selected as the input device, I clicked on Device properties.

When the Microphone Properties window appears, I selected Don't use this device(disable) for Device usage:

Windows 10 Microphone Properties for Conexand SmartAudio HD with device being disabled

Once I had done so, I clicked Apply and then OK.

With that, the applications can only use the microphone of my webcam as the sound input.

About Clivant

Clivant a.k.a Chai Heng enjoys composing software and building systems to serve people. He owns techcoil.com and hopes that whatever he had written and built so far had benefited people. All views expressed belongs to him and are not representative of the company that he works/worked for.