How To Disable Cortana Windows 10: Get The Super Easy Method

By Staff Writer 8 Min Read

Sometimes you need to know how to disable Cortana Windows 10 because it becomes annoying and useless. This personal assistant still has limitations that are unacceptable. It seems that Cortana doesn’t have the ability to help us in our own way. We found this built-in feature in Windows 10.

As a concerned user, some think that Cortana is a tool that invades their privacy. You can’t delete or uninstall this irritating Windows 10 personal assistance. But, you have the power to disable it. Follow the instructions I’m going to discuss that can help you to do it. Let’s see how we can disable Cortana from your Windows 10.

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Picture: Cortana

Why And How To Disable Cortana Windows 10? Let’s Find The Way

Sometimes I get confused about Microsoft’s digital personal assistant. If you test Cortana to find out its capabilities, then you will piss off. This is totally unhelpful in every situation. Definitely, Cortana is not going to get a high score as other digital personal assistance does. Most of the time Cortana misjudges the command and shows the wrong result. Even it wakes up from the middle of nowhere.

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This is a pretty bad experience for the Windows 10 user. Another bad side of Cortana is, it collects personal information. It happens when it tries to serve us. For that, this assistant of Windows 10, kills a huge space on disk and takes up a lot of RAM. Because of these reasons, you should know how to disable Cortana Windows 10. It’s time to get rid of this irritating feature. 

Methods of Disabling Cortana Windows 10

It is easy to kill this voice assistant feature if you are not interested in it. No more chance of piping up. You should know that disabling Cortana from Windows 10 is not easy. But knowing the right method can make the whole process smooth like butter to you. Let’s have a glance over them.

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Use Windows Setting

Using Windows Setting, you can easily disable Cortana. We divide the process into three sections. Let’s discuss it. 

Removing Cortana and Its Data

Basically, Cortana collects your personal information and monitors daily activity. Cortana was developed to offer you instant results based on what you are searching for. It has the ability to personalize and monitor all this information all the time. So, pause all the monitoring activities of Cortana.

  • Go to the Setting> Choose Cortana> Choose. Find the Permission and History tab and select it.
Permission and History
Picture: Setting Option

Permissions and History

  • There is an option named “Manage the information Cortana can access from the device”. Find this option and click on it to toggle On to Off.
Manage the information Cortana can access from the device
Picture: Toggling Permission
  • Cortana will open the “Personal Information” when you click on “Manage the information Cortana knows about me in the cloud”.
  • Now scroll down and clear everything.
Remove personal data from Cortana
Picture: Clearing Information
  • Now click on the Sign Out after clicking on your sign-in ID.
how to disable cortana windows 10
Picture: Sign out option
  • Try to find the history section. For that, you need to scroll again. You’ll find “View Activity History”. Toggle it off.
  • You’ve successfully wiped out all the data of Cortana and its activities.

Hiding Cortana

It’s time to hide Cortana from Your Windows 10. Cortana already stopped working in the background. So, you just need to hide it from the taskbar to complete the process.

  • Go to the taskbar and right-click on the taskbar. Click on the Cortana button and choose hidden.
  • Using Registry and Group Policy Editor

You may need to adopt the “crude” method to disable Cortana because Microsoft doesn’t allow to toggle Cortana’s assistant.

Hide Cortana in Windows 10
Picture: Hiding Cortana

Using the registry

  • Go to the search and type “Registry Editor”. Open it and go to the window.
Registry Editor in WIndows 10
Picture: Registry Editor
  • There is a Registry Address bar. Find it and put this address on this bar HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows. Sometimes you cannot find this bar. Right-clicking on the Windows folder will open the new option. Now add a new key by New>Key. Give it a new name “Windows Search”.
how to disable cortana windows 10
Picture: Adding New key
  • After selecting “Windows search” you need to right-click on the Windows panel and select New>DWORD (32-bit) Value.
how to disable cortana windows 10
Picture: Adding Value
  • Give it a name and that is “Allow Cortana” and set the value to “0”.

You are done with the process and restart the computer.

Using Local Group Policy Editor

  • Open “Run” prompt using Search. Type gpedit.msc in the box and hit the enter button.
Run command for Group Policy Editor
Picture: Run Prompt
  • Go to the Computer configuration> Administrative Templates> Windows Components> Search
  • Find the “Allow Cortana” and double click on it.
  • Disable the “Allow Cortana” option.
Disable Cortana using Local group Policy editor
Picture: Disabling
  • Confirm it by clicking OK and restart the PC.

This method will hide this digital assistant from your window. You will find it in the taskbar.

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Edit Cortana Folder

This method is able to remove the complete process of Cortana from the taskbar.

  • First of all, go to the Windows Search and Type “Task Manager”. Open it.
  • Look for the Cortana Process to make it show its process. Right-click on it and select the Open file location.
Cortana in task Manager
Picture: Task Manager
  • Right-click on the Cortana folder and rename this folder. Add”.bak” at the end of the name.
  • It will open the prompt named “Folder in use”
Cortana Folder in Windows 10

Picture: Folder In Use prompt

  • Now stop the process. Before you do it head back to Task Manager.
  • You need to go again to the prompt. Click on “Try Again”.

This is the process that blocks Cortana. It’s not going to run again in your Windows 10. Even updating your Windows 10 is not going to bring back Cortana. If you need to bring back this digital assistance then omit all the settings that have changed to disable Cortana.

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Conclusion

You may remember that disabling Cortana in Windows 10 was so simple. This happened when Windows 10 released for the first time. But the days and versions are changing. Disabling this digital assistance is not easy. That’s why this guide is for you to know how to disable Cortana Windows 10.  You must get the right method to do that.

There are lots of methods available which can do this thing. But a recent update integrated Cortana with Windows. So, the previous method is not going to work. All these three methods I’ve discussed can disable Cortana from your Windows. You can do it even if you’ve got a recent update. 

Sources: Google

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