At certain times, your iPhone now shows an orange or green dot in the top-right corner on the modern versions of iOS. These dots can be a little confusing if you are not familiar with them.
Here in this article, we will find out what the orange and green dots on iPhone mean and how you can use the information provided by them.
Colored Dots on iPhone
The colored dots have started appearing, starting from iOS 14, at the top corner of the screen. These dots signify:
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The orange dot means that your phone's microphone is turned on.
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The green dot means that your phone's camera or both, the camera and the microphone, are on.
Whenever an app is actively using the camera or the microphone, these dots will appear. The dots will disappear once the app stops using the feature. You must know that you won't see both, the green and the orange, lights on at the same time, because access to the camera implies access to the microphone as well, thus only the green light would be on in such situations.
But you will get no information about what the app is doing with the footage or the audio. Idealistically the camera and the microphone would be used for only these two purposes, but it could also be saving the data on the company's servers or getting involved in some other shady activity.
Checking the Apps that used your Camera or Microphone
You can also find out which app is using your microphone or camera. You just have to open the Control Center the information will be provided to you.
The name of the app will be visible at the top of the panel. If the app just stopped using your camera or microphone, it will add recently to the name of the app. But you have to make sure that you check instantly because it only appears for a short time.
You can open the Control Center by swiping down from the top-right on an iPhone without the Home button, or on the models with a Home button, you can just swipe up from the bottom.
Ways to Differentiate without Colour
You can enable an accessibility setting on your iPhone if you are colorblind or prefer another way to differentiate these dots. Just move to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > enable Differentiate Without Colour.
This will then change the orange dot on your iPhone into an orange square so that you can differentiate between them, without color.
Managing the Mic and Camera Permissions
The colored dots will mostly appear for apps that use your camera and microphone with permission. For instance, it's okay if you see them when calling with FaceTime, or when giving Siri voice commands.
You will normally see the dots that use your camera and microphone with permission. For instance, you will see them when you facetime, or when you give commands to Siri. But if the dots appear at other times, you should just move to Settings, then Privacy and then disable the camera and audio permissions for the app that you suspect are abusing the privileges. It is a very effective way to ensure privacy in your iPhone.
You can even reach out to the app developer if there is a bug in the app or you have some other questions about its usage. You should even think of uninstalling the app if you don't trust it at all.
Orange and Green Dots Boost Up your Privacy
Therefore, the main aim of the orange and green dots on your iPhone is to boost up your privacy by telling you when an app is accessing a sensitive part of your device. You might have given access to most apps asking for camera and microphone permissions and forgotten about it but these apps can use these permissions whenever they like.
So you should keep checking if the dots appear when you don't expect them to and uninstall the apps that misuse their privileges and violate privacy codes.
