It’s been several years since Microsoft introduced Cortana, its voice assistant. While offering assistance, Cortana has also managed to attract criticism from users. If you are also tired of Cortana recording or storing your personal information, here is how you can easily disable Cortana on Windows 10 Home, Pro, and Enterprise.
Disable Cortana on Windows 10:
- Open the Start menu and type regedit in the search bar. Click on the Registry Editor app and the system will prompt you to provide permissions to make changes. Select Yes to proceed.
- Type the location path below into the Registry Editor as shown below and press Enter.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows
- Right-click on the Windows tab, select New and then Key.
- Rename the New Entry to Windows Search and click anywhere to save the changes.
- Now right-click on the newly formed Windows Search folder and select New then DWORD (32-bit) Value.
- Rename the new entry to AllowCortana and press Enter or click anywhere to save the changes.
- Right-click on the AllowCortana entry and select Modify.
- Make sure to set the Value data as 0 and press OK to save the changes. All that is left is to restart your PC and that is how you disable Cortana on your Windows 10 computer.
Revoking Access or Deleting Previously Shared Information on Cortana
Cortana stores your personal information on the system as well as sends it in the form of feedback for improvement purposes to Microsoft. In order to remove all the data collected by Cortana from your PC, simply follow the instructions below:
- Open the Start menu and type settings in the search bar. Click on the Settings app to continue.
- In the Settings, select the Privacy tab.
- Select the Inking & typing personalization option from the Privacy menu.
- Now toggle the Getting to know you button Off to remove your personal data from your PC that was collected by Cortana.
You can use these steps to disable Cortana on Windows 10 and prevent it from collecting any personal data. These changes can be reverted at any moment by simply deleting the entries that were created in steps 4 and 5 of Regedit and restarting your PC.
