veilvoice-watch

Detect which applications are currently using the microphone and camera, with alerts on change.

Find out which applications are using your microphone and camera, right now.

Why this belongs in a voice-privacy tool

VeilVoice protects the audio you choose to send. This answers a different and more basic question: is something listening that you did not choose? A de-identified voice on a call is worth very little if a second program is recording the raw microphone at the same time.

Operating systems have grown indicators for this, the orange dot and the taskbar icon, but they are small, easily missed, and tell you only that something is active, rarely what. This reports the process, its PID and how long it has held the device.

What it can actually see, per platform

Detection is honest about its limits, because a monitor that quietly sees nothing is worse than no monitor at all, because it produces false confidence. support reports what the current platform can do before you rely on it.

| Platform | Microphone | Camera | How | |---|---|---|---| | Windows | ✅ | ✅ | The same CapabilityAccessManager records the OS privacy indicator uses | | Linux | ✅ | ✅ | /proc/*/fd handles open on /dev/snd/pcm* and /dev/video* | | macOS | ❌ | ❌ | No public API exposes it; anything claiming otherwise on macOS is guessing |

On Linux you see every process you have permission to inspect. Without root that means your own; other users' processes are invisible, and that is a kernel permission boundary rather than something this crate can work around.

In plain words

This tells you when something is using your microphone or camera.

Not what it is doing with them -- just that a program has them open, and which program. That is worth knowing before you start talking, and it is the kind of thing an operating system knows and does not always show you.

It cannot see everything. Some ways of getting at a microphone do not go past the place this reads.

HOW THE CRATE FITS TOGETHER

Every arrow is a crate:: or super:: path one module actually uses, read out of the source rather than drawn by hand.

The same graph as Mermaid source

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flowchart TD
    n_lib(["lib.rs<br/>423 lines"])
    n_appctl["appctl.rs<br/>798 lines"]
    n_input["input.rs<br/>605 lines"]
    n_linux["linux.rs<br/>201 lines"]
    n_privilege["privilege.rs<br/>404 lines"]
    n_proc["proc.rs<br/>274 lines"]
    n_windows["windows.rs<br/>606 lines"]
    n_input --> n_proc
    click n_lib href "https://github.com/tilas01/veilvoice/blob/main/crates/veilvoice-watch/src/lib.rs" "open the source"
    click n_appctl href "https://github.com/tilas01/veilvoice/blob/main/crates/veilvoice-watch/src/appctl.rs" "open the source"
    click n_input href "https://github.com/tilas01/veilvoice/blob/main/crates/veilvoice-watch/src/input.rs" "open the source"
    click n_linux href "https://github.com/tilas01/veilvoice/blob/main/crates/veilvoice-watch/src/linux.rs" "open the source"
    click n_privilege href "https://github.com/tilas01/veilvoice/blob/main/crates/veilvoice-watch/src/privilege.rs" "open the source"
    click n_proc href "https://github.com/tilas01/veilvoice/blob/main/crates/veilvoice-watch/src/proc.rs" "open the source"
    click n_windows href "https://github.com/tilas01/veilvoice/blob/main/crates/veilvoice-watch/src/windows.rs" "open the source"

This site loads no third-party script, so it cannot run Mermaid; the diagram above is the same nodes and edges drawn by the generator instead. GitHub renders the source below directly.

THE FILES

File	Lines	What it is
`appctl.rs`	798	Learn what normally runs on this machine, then notice what does not.
`input.rs`	605	What on this machine could be watching the keyboard and the mouse.
`lib.rs`	423	Find out which applications are using your microphone and camera, right now.
`linux.rs`	201	Linux detection, via open file handles in /proc.
`privilege.rs`	404	What privilege VeilVoice is running with, and what each level can actually see.
`proc.rs`	274	Which processes are running, per platform, and what that cannot tell you.
`windows.rs`	606	Windows detection, via the Capability Access Manager.
`scan_once.rs`	30	Print what is using the microphone and camera right now.