- A new Onlooker Detection feature is apparently coming to Windows 11
- This works with a presence sensor on a laptop to warn you if someone is sneaking a peek at your screen – plus it can also dim the display
- We don’t have concrete evidence of the feature yet, so don’t get too excited
Windows 11 is apparently going to be graced with a new capability as part of its Presence Sensing feature, with the system warning you if someone is sneaking a look at your screen.
PhantomOfEarth, a regular leaker of Windows info on X, flagged up the potential new feature, which is called ‘Onlooker Detection’. As they explain, it offers you a couple of options for actions you can take.
New Presence Sensing feature coming soon to Windows 11: Onlooker Detection. When your device notices that someone else is looking at your screen, it can dim the screen, notify you that someone’s looking, or both.May 2, 2025
When a nosy onlooker is detected, Windows 11 can either dim your screen to make it difficult for the person who’s looking over your shoulder to make out the content, or it can warn you of what’s going on. Or the OS can do both, and flag the onlooker as well as dimming the screen.
However, you’ll need the necessary hardware on board your laptop to use Presence Sensing, namely the requisite presence sensor (unsurprisingly – or multiple modules as there may be more than one). The technical name for this is HPD or Human Presence Detection hardware, and it’s a feature facilitated by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chips – in conjunction with said sensor – as well as AMD and Intel chips.
If you’re unsure whether your notebook has a presence sensor or not, you need to look in the Settings app, under System > Power & battery, and see if the relevant options are there as detailed in this Microsoft support document.
Elsewhere in the world of Windows 11 development, new Dev and Beta channel builds have arrived. In those preview versions – which have essentially the same features – Microsoft is trying some fine-tuning of the interface for Recall which consists of repositioning some banks of icons. (This is the AI-supercharged search function that’s only for Copilot+ PCs).
Those builds have also seen the addition of a bolder way to highlight apps on the taskbar that are requesting your attention (or are in a ‘needy state’), with a wider, more visible line under the app icon to make it clearer.
Some tweaks have been made to HDR options within Windows 11, as well, which includes a choice to allow for HDR to be used when streaming a video even if the system-wide switch for HDR is turned off. That’s a neat touch, too.
Analysis: A top-notch feature for when you’re out and about – if it happens
Currently the presence sensor is used to offer the ability to automatically turn off your screen when you leave the PC, and wake your device when you return (using Windows Hello sign-in to make everything seamless and secure).
A new function to detect anyone sneakily stealing a glance, or indeed a longer, more invasive look, at the contents of your screen would be an excellent addition on the privacy front. Whenever you’re working on your laptop on public transport or in a cafe, there’s always a feeling someone might be peeking over your shoulder.
The catch here is that we don’t have any concrete evidence of this feature yet. Presumably, PhantomOfEarth dug up references to Onlooker Detection in recent preview builds of Windows 11, but the leaker doesn’t explicitly say so. The alternative is that they heard from a source at Microsoft that this feature is in the pipeline, but whatever the case, this is far from certain.
We’ll need to see the feature officially in testing before we start to get excited about its arrival. Hopefully, it won’t be long before that happens, so keep those digits firmly crossed.
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