How to Prevent Microphone & Camera Access for Websites in Safari on Mac

Do you want to stop certain websites from trying to access your Mac’s webcam or microphone unnecessarily? You’ll be pleased to know that Safari on macOS makes it pretty easy to restrict websites that can request access to the camera or microphone with pop-ups.

You may already know how certain sites and apps request your permission to unlock certain features, including notifications, location, camera, microphone, or anything else really. Websites also may sometimes request these permissions too, particularly for microphone or camera access, for example if it’s a video conferencing site. However, unless it’s absolutely necessary for the site to function, you don’t have to give any website access to the camera or microphone on your Mac.

If you’re having concerns with the security of a website or you’re getting annoyed by requests to access the webcam or mic on your Mac, read on to learn how you can stop microphone and camera access requests when visiting websites using Safari on a Mac.

How to Block Microphone & Camera Access for Websites in Safari on Mac

Before you go ahead with the following steps, make sure your Mac is running at least macOS Mojave and are running an updated version of Safari, since older versions of Mac don’t have access to these website-specific settings.

1. Launch Safari on your Mac from the Dock, Applications folder, Spotlight, or Launchpad
   
   
2. Head over to the website that you want to limit or block camera and microphone access for. Now, click on “Safari” from the menu bar located next to the Apple logo.
   
   
3. Next, choose “Settings for This Website” from the dropdown menu as shown in the screenshot below.
   
   
4. This will bring up a pop-up menu below Safari’s address bar. Here, you’ll find the website-specific settings for the camera and microphone. By default, the permissions are set to “Ask” which is the reason for all the pop-ups.
   
   
5. Click on “Ask” next to both of these options and select “Deny” instead.
   
   

That’s all there is to it. You can now exit this menu and your settings will be updated immediately.

From now on, you will no longer get any camera or microphone access related pop-ups from this specific website since Safari will automatically block all of the website’s requests automatically. You can repeat these steps to limit camera and microphone access for other websites as well.

On the other hand, if you do trust the website and you only want to stop the permission pop-ups, you can also set the camera and microphone access to “Allow”. But, do this at your own risk and only enable it for reputed websites that you completely trust to have access to your mic and camera, of course.

Likewise, Safari also allows you to limit location access and screen sharing permissions for websites on an individual basis too. Privacy buffs may be interested in taking advantage of this feature to ensure that they’re not being tracked while browsing the web.

This obviously covers Safari for Mac, but you can also adjust these type of settings on most major third-party web browsers like Chrome or Firefox too.

If you use an iPhone or iPad, you may also be interested in learning how you can block camera and microphone access using Safari for iOS / iPadOS as well. Of course, you can restrict location access too, if needed.

Have you modified which websites can request access to your webcam and microphone using this privacy feature on Mac? Let us know your thoughts, tricks, and experiences in the comments.