Some laptops literally have the camera behind the screen. As in, behind pixels. It’s possible and classy.

My REDMAGIC Android phone is like this too and I love not having a stupid notch cut out of the screen. I've hated them since the very first time I saw a iPhone X. Can't believe such a ridiculous design defect infected Macbooks too :/

do you have a picture of what that looks like? having a hard time conceptualizing that.

It's not visible at all. The camera is just placed behind the screen.

OLED screens are inherently transparent, there is just a light-emitting layer in them. You put your camera behind the screen, and either make the few pixels on top of the lens go black when it's on, or you use a lot of software to remove the light that comes from the screen and clean up the picture.

My Oppo Reno 2z phone does this and honestly its been working great for years. I really like not having a notch.

Feels like for a laptop it would be durable enough and also fulfill the "webcam is physically blocked when off".