I just got one of my laptops installed with Windows 10 and noticed that some applications like "App Connector", "Microsoft Edge", and "OneNote" were set to use the laptop camera.
The text in the settings for this says that "Some apps need access to your camera to work as intended…". The settings list looked as shown below although here I have disabled the use of the camera.
My guess is that Microsoft Edge needs access to the camera in case I want to use it as a webcam, and maybe that OneNote camera access is more for Windows tablets that may be used as a portable camera.
About the "App Connector" however I saw an answer on this site that says:
App Connector seems to be related to MS Azure App Services like
OneDrive and possibly Office 365 connectors like
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn948518.aspx that might
optionally need to take pictures or know what country you're in as
some services might have restrictions or optimizations by location for
services they can provide.
I am not sure how correct above information is however, because of the persons use of words like "seems" and "might". Additionally stating that it's an app that might "need to take pictures" sounds like a privacy concern.
So I wanted to check here in case anyone knows.
What is the "app connector" and why would it want access to the camera?
Best Answer
Based on my general knowledge on how Windows 10 Universal Applications work I have no reason to doubt the following explanation by Maury Szwerdszarf. While I could have generated my own answer, from the actual SDK documentation, my existing knowledge on the subject is good enough to determine these two existing explanations are accurate.
Basically...As PostScript5 explains: