How to Disable Cortana Feature in windows 10

One of the major changes to Windows 10 is the presence of Microsoft’s voice assistant Cortana. Along with voice searches, you will be given “suggestions” that the voice assistant makes. Cortana is a new voice assistant feature, which has been ported from Windows Phone to Windows 10. Microsoft has done it’s best to market this feature as a useful technology for consumers. However, many users are finding Cortana annoying and want to disable Cortana completely. This is an inbuilt feature so uninstall in almost impossible for users but you can Disable this. If you are also one of then who looks to get rid of the Cortana feature. Here fallow bellow steps to Disable Cortana Feature.

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Disable Cortana Feature windows 10

Disable Cortana search from the start menu

Cortana first shows up as a search box on the Windows 10 desktop screen. The “Ask me anything” bar that is one of the most visible new features to the Windows OS. If it’s this search bar that’s annoying you, then you can make it disappear without fully turning Cortana off. Simply right-click the search box or task bar, select Cortana, and you will see options to Show Cortana and Show search box. Select or unselect these options to make the search bar and Cortana’s little icon appear and disappear.

Switch off Cortana on the start menu

Open Cortana from the taskbar or start menu. Go to Settings of Cortana by clicking the button on top left. Switch off all toggles which may initiate any trigger for Cortana to work even in background.

Next Step is to remove Cortana from the Taskbar. For this Right click on sidebar. Open Search Menu and select “Disabled“. This Cortana shall not be initiated now automatically. But now even when you’ve disabled Cortana, you’ll still find it working in the background.

Disable Cortana using Taskmanager

Right click on taskbar and select Task Manager. When the Task Manager open move to the Processes tab, select Cortana and right-click on it.

Select “Open File Location“, Cortana folder would be opened from where it is getting executed. Now scroll down and find the Cortana folder, right click it, and select Rename. I would recommend just adding “.bak” to the end of the folder name so you can find it easily if you want to restore it back to its original status

If you attempt to rename, it will tell you that the folder is in use. Now, move to task manager and right click on Cortana process and click “End Task“.

Right after the task ends, switch back to the Folder In Use window and click Try Again. The folder should be renamed and the Cortana task will not start again.

Remove Cortana or any other System App on windows 10

To Remove any system app we need to first open the windows power shell. For this click on start, menu search, and type power shell. you will see windows PowerShell on search results. Right click on it and run as administrator.

When the windows power shell opens Type the following command and hit the enter key to get the Cortana package name.

Get-AppxPackage *cortana*

After that command you will find the package name of cortana use mouse course to select and ctrl + c to copy the package name.

For me the package name is : Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_1.7.0.14393_neutral_neutral_cw5n1h2txyewy

Now Type below command and hit enter key to Remove cortana package and disable cortana completely.

Remove-AppxPackage Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_1.7.0.14393_neutral_neutral_cw5n1h2txyewy

That’s all now after execute the command windows cortana will disable permanently.

Disable Cortana Feature using Group policy

Press Win + R keyboard accelerator to open Run dialog box. Type GPedit.msc and hit Enter or OK to open Local Group Policy Editor. Navigate to Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Search.

In the right pane, double click on the policy named Allow Cortana. Select the Disabled radio button.