If you’re a streamer, rely on accessibility, or just want to see your face in multiple apps for some reason, it might be worth upgrading your PC for a new feature of Windows 11 in the latest developer build. Just give it a few months until it’s actually available in a stable version of Windows 11.
As reported by Windows Latest citing @phantomofearth on X, then verified by me personally hours While we wait for Windows updates, the original feature is actually intended as a tool for assistance. It is “designed for the hard of hearing community,” although the feature does not explain how it could be used.
To even access it, you need to opt-in to the latest dev build of Windows 11: 10.0.26120.1542. Once you have that, you need to go to a hidden setting in the advanced camera settings and toggle the “Multi-app camera,” which is disabled by default. And you can only get that far if you use a special tool and enable the features with the correct feature ID (thanks XDA for the help).
All this means that a very minimal change requires many hours of work and may only be worthwhile for the accessibility purpose mentioned above.
There’s one big reason streamers could benefit from it, though. Until now, if you wanted to stream games to an audience using a facecam and talk on a Discord call at the same time, you’d need two webcams or different devices to do it. With this new feature, your friends will be able to see your face in Discord and the audience will see it on the stream too. This is an incredibly niche feature, but also one that the right type of streamer could take advantage of. With this feature enabled, you won’t be able to access in-app features and will have to change the brightness in Windows settings, so its use is somewhat limited.
As for accessibility, one could cite transcription or lip-reading software that can extract words while simultaneously making a written note of what was said. However, this is pure conjecture on my part and a cursory Google search does not assuage my curiosity.
If this rolls out in a future Windows Update, we should get a better idea of its accessibility purpose. So far, I’ve spent a few tedious hours checking to see if it exists, but we don’t know when we’ll see it in a more public Windows Update.
