If you regularly make audio or video calls from your computer, you’ll sometimes find people popping out of the picture, or fumbling for the mute button, or otherwise trying to sort out their technical settings. This can take several minutes at the beginning of each call as all participants try to sort out everything.

If you want to give yourself a head start and avoid any potential embarrassment once the call starts, test your webcam and microphone configuration before you connect. There are ways to do this on Windows and macOS, and many video chat apps have a built-in feature for this as well.

To see what you look like on Windows, open the Camera app from the Start menu. You’ll immediately see what your webcam is currently seeing. If you have more than one camera connected, use the toggle icon in the upper-right corner to cycle through your different devices.

In the upper left corner, you’ll see a gear icon, which will take you to your webcam settings. Here, you can adjust a number of options, including the resolution of the video your webcam broadcasts over the internet. Be aware, however, that your favorite video calling app may override these settings.