Windows 10: Turn Cortana off without disabling it?

Hi All,

I've had so much useful info from this site over the last 7 months as I've been playing with win 10 but this is my first post so I apologise if it's on the wrong board.

I'm trying to find out whether it is possible to turn Cortana on or off via Group Policy or the Registry but I don't want to disable it. I've already seen the GP and reg settings to disable/enable Cortana.

The company I work for are about to deploy Windows 10 and there has been a business decision to have Cortana switched off by default but allow the users to turn it back on if they wish.

Windows 10 will be deployed via SCCM and if I can't find a way to control the settings from GP or the registry I'll have to go and amend the base image to have Cortana turned off and re-capture it.

Any help would be very grateful.

Cheers,

Westy

:)

 

Public WiFi Error

OK I think I actually found the problem. If i pull up the task manager, it relates the error to SearchUI.exe. I think I may have disabled this in the registry to turn Cortana off. I guess I need to turn SearchUI.exe back on. This wouldnt be so frustrating
if Microsoft let users turn off Cortana without editing the registry.

 

Windows Update

You don't have to turn off Windows Update to turn off Cortana.

See how you can turn off Cortana:

https://www.kapilarya.com/how-to-completely-dis...

 

Hello Westy, and welcome to Ten Forums. *Smile

The tutorial below can show you how to turn on/off Cortana, but it's a per account setting and not global like the enable/disable option.

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/4...dows-10-a.html

 

Hello and glad to hear you have found the site useful *Smile

I am sure you have seen the tutorials on Cortana so I wont list those. As you say it is easy to disable and enable Cortana via the GP or Reg route but simply turning on or off is done in the Cortana Settings. My recollection is that W10 starts out with Cortana OFF by default. Have you found that to not be the case for you? Perhaps it is controlled by some of the privacy settings you decide during the initial setup.

 

Cheers for the warm welcome fellas.

I have indeed checked through the tutorials and have seen the one posted by Brink but I need a way to manage these settings centrally if possible.

I've found that on the Threshold 2 (1511) release that Cortana is on by default and by clicking on the search bar in the bottom left you are asked whether you wish to continue or "not interested". Continuing then prompts for a windows login, and "not interested" switches Cortana off which can be seen in the options.

I'm hoping there is a way to have it turned off by default and the end user then has to go into settings and turn it on should they wish to use it. If as Brink says the Cortana settings are based per user I need to see if it's possible to set it as off in the default user profile. I have a feeling this isn't going to be possible.

 

Westy, why would you want to do that?

The last few Windows OSs have had terrible search engines. Cortana lets you easily get to things like Restore point, Settings, Device Manager if you don't know another way. On the web, it is a powerful search engine that is at least equivalent to Google and Yahoo. Cortana can be shrunk down to a magnifying glass icon to save space, but there is no good reason to get rid of it.

 

Hi Vince,

Basically this has been a security decision by the business due to all the data collection scaremongering. The business like to let their users be as flexible as possible so they want it switched off by default but allow the end user to turn it on if they want to. If it was my decision I'd leave it on.

 

Would simply hiding the search bar be enough to satisfy your bosses? (= rt click on taskbar and click Cortana, Hidden)
If that could be done remotely...

These hot keys still apply:
Windows key + S, Windows key + C launch Cortana.

I suspect turning Cortana off completely inhibits searching in Settings (which is dependent, like Cortana's 'My Stuff' on Windows search index)- think I noted that when Cortana was 'broken' once.