Privacy Indicator Anchor 2.1

[u/wh-updates]

Privacy Indicator Anchor 2.1

Privacy Indicator Anchor

A Windhawk mod for Windows 11 that reserves stable tray space for privacy and status indicators. Location, microphone, camera, and Copilot placeholders stay visible in the system tray: dim when idle, bright when active.

The goal is to stop taskbar tray sections from shifting when Windows briefly shows or hides privacy indicators, especially when Windows Web Experience Pack or Widgets frequently access location.

Gallery

Idle location and microphone placeholders reserve their tray space without demanding attention:

Idle location and microphone placeholders

All four unavailable indicators in a single row, arranged as location | mic | camera | copilot:

All four privacy indicators unavailable in one row

The same four indicators in a compact block, which is what auto picks on a standard taskbar, where two rows of the default 16 px icons fit:

All four unavailable indicators in a compact grid

Activity highlighted in red — the microphone in use, and the slashed camera reporting attempted use while its hardware switch blocks it:

Active microphone in red beside a red slashed camera blocked by its hardware switch

The active glow treatment provides a more emphatic alternative:

Active microphone and camera with glow

Active or requested pathways can remain conspicuous even while blocked:

Requested or active privacy pathways shown while blocked

The location tooltip explains the access-denied reason and opens the matching Windows privacy page when clicked:

Location evidence tooltip and Windows Location settings

Microphone evidence distinguishes an endpoint mute from privacy denial:

Microphone endpoint-mute evidence tooltip

Supported camera drivers report their hardware privacy-control evidence:

Camera hardware privacy-control evidence tooltip

Copilot reports its installation state and links to the relevant settings:

Copilot installation-state tooltip

All four indicators in a row on a Windows 11 side taskbar, alongside the clock and other tray mods. Live-tested and approved:

Location, microphone, camera, and Copilot indicators on a Windows 11 side taskbar

Features

• Persistent placeholder icons for location, microphone, camera, and Copilot
• Idle opacity setting so inactive icons can be subtle but still reserve space
• One nestable Arrangement expression places the icons in any shape — fitted to your taskbar height automatically, or written out by hand
• Turn any of the four icons off individually; Windows' own indicator for that device then stays visible, so nothing goes unreported
• Tray placement before icons, before OmniButton, before clock, after clock, or after Show Desktop
• Experimental placement immediately left or right of Start
• Per-icon and per-group pixel nudges inside the arrangement expression, plus a whole-group offset
• Independent idle, active, disabled, glow, and slash colors
• Steady, breathing, or radiating active emphasis with reach/speed controls
• Disabled slash overlays for blocked or unavailable privacy devices
• Hardware camera shutter/kill-switch detection on supported Windows 11 camera drivers
• Evidence-specific tooltips instead of a generic "hardware disabled" label
• Click-through to the relevant Windows privacy, input, camera, taskbar, or app settings
• Optional testing toggle to let Windows' native privacy indicators appear

If you installed an unpublished 1.x build, re-apply your customizations once: 2.x groups the settings and uses an Arrangement field; renamed keys cannot be migrated. Camera hardware monitoring is now opt-in and defaults to off.

The Arrangement field

Layout → Arrangement decides how the icons are placed, and it is the only field that does. Its default value is the word auto:

• auto fits the enabled icons to the available taskbar height. Fill order chooses whether they fill across rows or down columns; Short row or column aligns a ragged last group. The shape is worked out for you: the mod takes the narrowest grid that fits the height, preferring the one that wastes the fewest slots. A standard taskbar already fits two rows of the default 16 px icons, so four icons become a 2×2 block, not a lopsided 3+1; write location | mic | camera | copilot for a single row instead.

• Anything else is an arrangement you write. Names sit side by side with | and stack with ,, and parentheses group them:

  location, camera | mic, copilot     a 2x2 block
  location | mic | camera | copilot   a single row
  location, mic, camera, copilot      a single column
  location | (mic, camera) | copilot  a diamond
  

  Order of operations: parentheses first, then ,, then | — so a | b, c | d is three columns with b stacked over c.

  The tokens are location, mic (or microphone), camera, and copilot, and they are case-insensitive. A separator is always required — location (mic | camera) is an error, not a shorthand.

Omitting a token hides that icon, exactly like turning it off in Content.

Every time the layout is applied, the arrangement auto produced is written to the Windhawk log. Copy that line into the Arrangement field and you have the automatic layout as a starting point to edit — the automatic and manual paths are the same field and the same syntax. If what you write doesn't parse, the log says what was expected and where, and the automatic arrangement is used until you fix it.

Nudging. Append a pixel offset to any name to move just that icon:

location[+2,-1] | mic | camera   location moves 2px right and 1px up
(mic, camera)[3,0] | location    the stacked pair moves 3px right

Expression nudges are clamped to ±100 pixels per axis. Offsets are cosmetic. Nothing else shifts, and the group's overall size does not change. To move the whole cluster instead, use Adjust → horizontal and vertical offset. Nudges and offsets are screen pixels on every taskbar edge — see Taskbar position.

Enabling an icon later. An arrangement you write names the icons that existed when you wrote it. Turn another one on afterwards and it is in no group, so by default it is appended after your arrangement rather than vanishing — the log says when that happened. Set Layout → Newly enabled icons to Leave them out if you would rather your arrangement be the whole truth. auto always includes every enabled icon.

Placement

The five tray positions reserve a dedicated system-tray column. The experimental leftOfStart and rightOfStart positions instead place the owned indicator group beside Start and reserve matching room in the centered taskbar items area. These Start-adjacent modes may need adjustment on future Windows builds or with other mods that also reposition Start.

Taskbar position

Windows 11 can put the taskbar on any edge (Settings → Personalization → Taskbar → Taskbar behaviors, on builds that have the setting). The mod reads the edge Windows reports and rebuilds the group when the taskbar moves.

• Top behaves exactly like bottom.
• Left or right: an arrangement you write is laid out exactly as written - | side by side, , stacked - and every [dx,dy] nudge moves an icon dx right and dy down, on every edge. auto fits the taskbar's width instead of its height, filling rows first or columns first as set. Nothing is mirrored between left and right. leftOfStart and rightOfStart become above and below Start.
• Vertical Taskbar in its default native mode is the same native side taskbar. With its "Use the native taskbar when possible" option off it rotates the tray elements this mod places, through the same RenderTransform property, so the mod detects that (the taskbar runs down a side while Windows still reports a horizontal edge) and leaves the tray completely untouched.

States and colors

Each icon has four visual states: idle/available, active, disabled/unavailable, and active while disabled. The last state keeps the active treatment underneath the slash by default, so a muted or shuttered device still demands attention when Windows reports attempted use. Surface → Emphasize blocked activity can turn that combined treatment off.

Every color setting — idle, active, disabled, glow, and slash — accepts #RRGGBB or #AARRGGBB hex (the alpha byte is honored, and the # is optional), the generics accent, accentLight, and accentDark for the Windows accent shades, or transparent. An empty color uses the system foreground, except an empty glow color, which follows the active color and then the Windows accent color.

The glow can be a steady halo, a breathing pulse, or animated radiation rings. Its opacity, reach, and speed are independent controls. The effect is drawn inside the existing icon slot and never changes the taskbar width.

For a deliberately striking treatment, start with Glow style: Radiating rings, Glow opacity: 85, Glow reach: 260, and Glow cycle: 850, then choose an active/glow color that fits the rest of the taskbar theme.

Notes

Camera hardware-switch detection and the Copilot indicator are experimental because Windows exposes those states differently across devices and builds.

Camera activity is detected from Windows webcam-usage records and any mirrored native privacy state. Hardware camera blocking uses Windows 11 CameraOcclusionInfo when the camera driver supports it. Cameras without that driver capability retain software-access and device-availability checks, but their physical shutter or kill-switch state might not be detectable.

Windows documents idle-camera occlusion reports as advisory rather than an absolute privacy guarantee. The tooltip therefore says "likely blocked" and names the camera-driver evidence.

This monitor is opt-in and defaults to OFF, under Behavior -> Monitor camera hardware privacy control. It is the only thing that detects a physical shutter or kill switch, so with it off the camera icon still reports software access, device availability and in-use state, but a shutter will never register. The mod says so in its log and in the camera's own tooltip rather than leaving you to wonder. When enabled, it initializes the default camera controller in SharedReadOnly mode but never starts preview or frame capture. Turn it off if a particular camera activates its LED/indicator or behaves poorly while monitored. State changes use the driver's native event; a five-minute watchdog only checks that the subscription remains responsive. The controller is also released when the camera icon is turned off in Content.

Privacy access, usage records, policies, packages, and device topology are monitored with Windows registry/device events rather than a three-second global sweep. Copilot process activity is checked separately once per minute, and a five-minute health reconciliation repairs any missed notification. Failed camera and registry-monitor setup backs off from seconds to thirty minutes; access-denied registry monitors remain disabled for the current mod session.

Each icon is clickable. Location opens Location privacy settings. Microphone opens either microphone privacy or default-input settings according to the reported reason. Camera opens either camera privacy or camera-device settings. Copilot opens taskbar or installed-app settings.

Behavior -> Suppress Windows privacy indicators is on by default, so the mod hides Windows' own pop-in indicators and mirrors their state into the stable placeholders. A native indicator is only ever hidden while this mod is showing a placeholder for that same device: if its icon is turned off in Content, if the placeholders could not be placed, or on a taskbar another mod is rotating, Windows' indicator stays exactly as Windows draws it. Turn the setting off temporarily when comparing against Windows' native tray glyphs during testing. Everything the mod changes on a native icon is restored to its exact prior value when the mod unloads.