Meaning of the green and orange dots that now appear on the iPhone and iPad

If you have already updated your iPhone or iPad to iOS 14 or iPadOS 14, you may have noticed that a green or orange dot appears to the right of the top notch on your device's screen.

Mac users who have seen the green dot will immediately know what it is. As with Macs, the green dot means that the camera is working, and that some application is capturing video with it. Let's see what the orange dot means.

A small detail after updating our iPhones and iPads this week has not gone unnoticed by users. Once in a while a green or orange dot appears at the top of the screen, indicating a specific status.

It is a new example of the company's obsession with protect your privacy. When they appear, it means that certain "dangerous" functions of your device are in use, and it is important to be careful if they appear. Let's see what they tell us about.

What does the green or orange dot mean

As I mentioned in the introduction, if you use a Mac with a built-in webcam, you will be familiar with the little green LED that lights up whenever the webcam is active. The green dot on iPhone and iPad works the same way.

Every time you see the green dot, means that an application is using one of the cameras of your device, and probably your microphones as well. You will see it when you use the built-in camera or when you make video calls.

Instead, if the dot is orange, it means that an application is using the microphones of your iPhone or iPad. You will see it when you are in a voice call, when you use Siri or when you use a third-party application that needs to activate the mic.

One more help to user privacy

It seems silly, but it is not. If the dot appears in either of the two colors and you at that moment are not using the camera or the microphone voluntarily, to the parrot! It means that some application is doing it in the background, and that is not good for your security.

If this happens to you, open the control center of your device as long as one of those points is active, or immediately after it has been turned off, and you can see which application was using the camera or the mike.