Microsoft has included Cortana in the windows 10 builds. This virtual assistant has gained quite a lot of popularity among the users. But sometimes it feels annoying talking to a machine. In this case, someone might want to disable Cortana from windows 10. This guide tells you how to disable Cortana on windows 10. The guide includes the information so that you can remove Cortana from the taskbar as well as completely uninstall Cortana from Windows 10.
If allowed, Cortana can access your locations, searches, personal info, etc. to personalize the windows experience. But in this case, Cortana uses internet data and the CPU resources in the background. This may lead to slow down your PC and run out of your internet balance.
How to disable Cortana on Windows 10
Well, there are two scenarios here, the first is whether you want to remove Cortana from the taskbar and turn off your data access from accessing it. The second case is if you wish to disable Cortana permanently by uninstalling it so that the regular Windows search will be enabled in the start menu.
We have covered both the cases in a detailed step by step manner.
Case 1 – Remove Cortana from the taskbar
If you feel that Search bar in the taskbar is annoying you and taking more space in the taskbar, you can remove it. It makes your taskbar clean and neat.
- Step1: Right click anywhere on the taskbar and move the mouse cursor over Cortana option.
- Step2: From the opened Cortana Options, Click on Hidden options to remove Cortana from taskbar
now that Cortana is hidden, its time to disable some Cortana permission that you might not want to allow to access.
Disable Cortana Permissions –
Cortana access some of your data and runs in the background. If you want to disable the permissions follow below steps –
- Step1: Click on the Windows start menu and search for “Cortana“
- Step2: From the displayed search results, click on Cortana & search settings.
- Step3: Click on the second option of Permission & history from the left side menu.
- Step4: Now turn off Cloud Search, History options from the screen.
- Step5: On the same screen, click on manage the information Cortana can access from this device.
- Step6: Now, from the opened new screen, disable Location, Contacts, emails, calendar and communication history, Browsing History. You can disable the options as per your preferences.
That’s it; you have disabled permissions to Cortana.
Remember that, in this method, Cortana is still present on your computer, you have just hidden it from the taskbar and restricted permissions. Cortana can still run in the background and access some of your resources and the internet. If you want to completely disable Cortana, then case 2 is for you.
Case2 – Permanatelly Disable Cortana on Windows 10 by un-installing it.
Using this method, you can disable Cortana completely from your PC. For this, you have to uninstall Cortana. You can do this by registry editor on both Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro edition.
- Step1: Open Run tool by pressing Win + R keys from the keyboard.
- Step2: Type following command and hit enter to open the registry editor.
regedit
- Step3: On the Registry Editor go to the following path by expanding the menus one by one.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search
- Step4: If you don’t find Windows Folder, then you can create a new. To create a new folder, right click on Windows option and select New –> Key and name the folder as Windows Search.
- Step5: Now in the Windows Search Folder, right click on the empty area from the right side of the portion. select New –> DWORD (32-bit) Value.
- Step6: name the file as AllowCortana and press Enter to create a file.
- Step7: Double click on the AllowCortana and type 0 in the value data field. Click OK to save the changes and close the window.
Using these 7 easy steps you can disable Cortana on Windows 10. Now the start menu search results are shown using Windows Search instead of Cortana.
Summary –
Windows assistant Cortana has both merits and demerits. Users might want to disable Cortana as they don’t use such features or find it annoying. You can remove Cortana from the taskbar by hiding it and disable permission to get rid of Cortana. Also if you want, you can permanently disable Cortana by Uninstall Cortana method and remove Cortana completely from windows 10.
I hope this article on How to disable Cortana on windows 10 helped you and you succeeded in disabling Cortana from your PC. If you have any question/query, you can ask in the comment section below, we will definitely solve it.
