How to Completely Disable ‘Eye Tracker Access’ via Group Policy in Windows 11

Windows 11 includes a robust, OS-level permissions architecture designed to broker application access to specialized biometric and sensory hardware, including connected Eye Trackers. The Eye Tracker API allows third-party UWP (Universal Windows Platform) and modern Windows apps to access real-time gaze data from compatible hardware (like Tobii Eye Trackers) to facilitate accessibility controls, gaming enhancements, or user interaction analytics. While highly beneficial for accessibility, unfettered access to eye-tracking hardware represents a catastrophic operational security (OPSEC) and extreme privacy liability in highly restricted enterprise, financial, or military environments. A compromised application could silently record a user’s eye movements to deduce what sensitive data they are reading on the screen, or analyze pupil dilation to perform unauthorized biometric profiling.

This guide explains how to completely disable ‘Eye Tracker Access’ via Group Policy in Windows 11, enforcing a strict, system-wide block that prevents any application from querying or interacting with the host operating system’s gaze-tracking APIs.

Disable Eye Tracker Access via Group Policy

To enforce a strict configuration that explicitly strips the OS of its ability to broker eye-tracking telemetry and overrides any user-defined privacy settings in the modern Settings app, we must deploy an administrative template. Note that this requires Windows 11 Pro, Enterprise, or Education editions.

1. Log into Windows 11 with an Administrator account.
2. Press the Windows Key + R to open the Run dialogue box.
3. Type gpedit.msc and press Enter to launch the Local Group Policy Editor.
4. In the left-hand navigation pane, strictly follow this exact path:

   Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > App Privacy

5. In the right-hand pane, locate the policy named Let Windows apps access eye tracker devices.
6. Double-click the policy to open its configuration window.
7. Select the radio button next to Enabled.
8. Under the Options section, locate the dropdown menu labeled “Default for all apps”.
9. Explicitly select Force Deny from the list. (By explicitly setting this to Force Deny, we instruct the Windows API broker to proactively intercept and reject any process attempting to access the gaze-tracking hardware, overriding user preference and ensuring a cryptographic block on visual biometrics).
10. Click Apply, then click OK.

Verify the Configuration Lockdown

Group Policy changes modifying core OS privacy APIs require the operating system to update its local security policy state.

Open Command Prompt as Administrator and run gpupdate /force. To verify the restriction is actively enforced, launch the Windows 11 Settings app and navigate to Privacy & security > Eye tracker (if the hardware is present/supported). You will immediately notice that the master toggle for allowing apps to access the eye tracker is completely greyed out and locked in the “Off” position. At the top of the window, a red or yellow banner will prominently declare, “Some of these settings are managed by your organization.” Furthermore, launching any application that previously relied on gaze integration will result in immediate API failures or prompts stating that access has been administratively revoked, confirming total OPSEC and biometric privacy compliance.