Microsoft Teams freezes: Set cam permissions for conferencing apps

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Robert Pearman

Robert is a small business specialist from the UK and currently works as a system administrator. He was a Microsoft MVP for eight years and has worked as a technical reviewer for Microsoft Press. You can follow Robert on Twitter and in his blog.

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My standard go-to for troubleshooting anything with the Teams desktop client is to reproduce the issue in the web client. When I loaded up their web browser (Chrome), went to teams.microsoft.com, and used the Meet Now option, the camera and mic went live straightaway. I then decided to try it in Edge, but this time, I was met with a permissions message:

teams.microsoft.com wants to use your camera - Select Allow to let Microsoft Teams use your mic and camera for calls and meetings on this browser.

Microsoft Teams requires permission to access the camera

After I set the permissions to Allow, I was able to test that Teams worked in Edge, as well as in Chrome. I was then able to continue troubleshooting Teams in the Windows app.

This led me to wonder whether there was a policy option in Edge that I could set to automatically allow the camera and microphone for certain websites (Teams or other apps), and there is.

By creating the registry keys AudioCaptureAllowedURLs and VideoCaptureAlllowedURLs, we can add a string property to contain the URL of the site we wish to allow access to the camera and microphone without prompting the user.

AudioCaptureAllowedURLs registry key

VideoCaptureAllowedUrls registry key

By running the following commands in PowerShell, we can set the following policies:

New-Item HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge\AudioCaptureAllowedUrls
New-Item HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge\VideoCaptureAllowedUrls
New-ItemProperty HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge\AudioCaptureAllowedUrls -name 1 -value "https://teams.microsoft.com" -propertyType String
New-ItemProperty HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge\VideoCaptureAllowedUrls -name 1 -value "https://teams.microsoft.com" -propertyType String

We do not need to change any other settings, and all that is required is to refresh the policy in Edge.

Setting only the URL rather than the default permission retains the default, which asks the user to allow access to the microphone and camera while managing the permission for the sites you wish.

If you have other sites to add, they should have their names incremented by 1, so if we wanted to add 3cx.co.uk as an allowed site, the name for the property would be 2. This follows the same logic that managed extensions use.

Adding additional URLs

Once the policy is applied, you can view it in the edge://policy section. If you go to the Site permissions section, you will see it is managed.

Managed microphone permission

Edge policy settings

Now, we can combine the above with the option to install Teams as a web app and remove the problematic desktop client altogether.

Load up https://teams.microsoft.com. Then click the Edge menu icon, and click to expand the Apps item.

Install Teams as a Web App

On the next screen, you can add an app name. Then click Install.

Set the web app name

Teams will now reload as a web app. You can set the relevant options.

Set web app options

You can also deploy a web app using the Edge policy, but the options for shortcuts and pinning to the Start menu and the taskbar are limited.

More info on that is available here.