How to Disable Cortana in Windows 10

[apiltch]

If you're tired of letting Cortana dominate your desktop, you can turn it off in a few simple steps.

How to Disable Cortana in Windows 10 : Read more

 

[Onus]

At first I thought "Great! Kill her now!" Unfortunately, however, it doesn't work. After following the indicated steps, Task Manager still shows Cortana and its subtasks; kill them, and they restart as always.

 

[johnbl]

i used to disable cortona but if found it exposed a lot of bugs and I had to reenable it.

 

[stdragon]

At first I thought "Great! Kill her now!" Unfortunately, however, it doesn't work. After following the indicated steps, Task Manager still shows Cortana and its subtasks; kill them, and they restart as always.

I'm assuming you rebooted after making the changes in registry? Anyways, it's only a matter of time before M$ does something silly like fuse her to the kernel. Her and the OS will soon be one in the same, inseparable...always spying!

 

[Peter Martin]

ms doesn't really allow this. it won't work all the way. lol.

 

[Onus]

Yes, I rebooted. The undead are among us; their name is "Cortana," and she refuses to DIE.

 

[Math Geek]

cortana is still disabled despite being in task manager. the local search feature is still active and that service is under the cortana umbrella, so it's listed as such. beat my head against the wall for a long time before i figure this out.

if you kill all the search completely, then it'll go away. but since the local search can be useful i leave that turned on.

 

[sadsteve]

You can stop Cortana by clearing the 'executable' permission (for all users) on the SearchUI.exe file. On my machine this file is in this directory: "C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy". You'll have to take ownership of the directory before you'll be allowed to change the permissions on the SearchUI.exe file. You can then stop the Cortana processes via the task manager and they won't come back. You'll may need to redo this after windows updates occur.

Search the web for the registry change that will give you a 'Take Ownership' selection on the Windows explorer right click context menu.

 

[g-unit1111]

Knock it all you want but Cortana actually can be useful for some things. What isn't useful is the integrated XBOX crap, I would love to know how to disable that.

 

[daglesj]

Only way I've found is to find the active folder it's in from task manager, rename the folder to .old (whatever) and end the Cortana task and save the folder change in the second you get before Cortana service fires up again.

 

[Math Geek]

Knock it all you want but Cortana actually can be useful for some things. What isn't useful is the integrated XBOX crap, I would love to know how to disable that.

good old command line let's you uninstall all that junk. or just use autoruns to disable it all at start-up. won't run if you don't ask it to after that

 

[smashjohn]

i'm sorry dave.. i'm afraid i can't do that.

 

[brandonjclark]

You could always use Destroy Win10 Spying application.

 

[brandonjclark]

https://github.com/Nummer/Destroy-Windows-10-Spying

 

[stdragon]

https://github.com/Nummer/Destroy-Windows-10-Spying

I prefer ShutUp10 by O&O. The real irony is that O&O is a Gold Microsoft Partner :lol:

https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

 

[The Paladin]

O&O is what I use, it disables Cortana and leaves you the useful part.. the search engine.

 

[g-unit1111]

i'm sorry dave.. i'm afraid i can't do that.