Months ago, I made some adjustments to lock down my phone’s privacy settings. Today I found that I got bit by one of my changes. When I was locking things down, I disabled the microphone and camera for Safari.

Other useful apps, such as the MyChart medical records service, use the browser to do video calling.

My first attempt to repair the problem was to look for a bad settings for MyChart, but it didn’t show up there. Until I did a wider search did I find that I had hobbled Safari to my own detriment.

The reason I was unable to solve it in the past is that the problematic setting wasn’t in the obvious places. Camera settings, Microphone settings, Privacy settings and MyChart settings all looked irrelevant. Instead, it was in Safari settings. I hadn’t realized was so integral to other apps.

When they say that any sufficiently advanced technology is like magic, I thought that I would know the right incantation. I couldn’t find the eye of newt. It was hiding in the back of the produce department near the sign “Beware of the leopard.”