
How to disable the built-in Windows 10 ads - miles
https://www.faqforge.com/windows/windows-10/how-to-disable-all-of-the-built-in-windows-10-ads/
======
balaam
For me, Windows 10 is where I felt like I was no longer in control of my own
computer.

Microsoft doesn't do discrete OS updates anymore but I definitely feel like it
might time to give Linux another go next time I upgrade my hardware. There's
less and less software the holds me to MS. This is due to so many programs
going to the web - Google Docs suite, dictionaries etc and partially due to
better Linux support for software I use such as Unity or games via Wine.
What's held me back until now has been poor graphics driver support.

~~~
shm33
They are trying to kill the idea of local apps and exe's, aka they can finally
turn "files" into property by using active directory and NTFS for the entire
internet. You all seem clueless as to the last 20 years of software theft in
the game industry.

Everyone 20 year ago on slashdot was worried about software and hardware drm,
windows 10 is the first version of windows where they are trying to turn the
PC into a mobile locked down platform because of the success of walled gardens
like steam, world of warcraft, and the appstores like apple/google play.

The level of stupid on hacker news is disturbing, we used to get complete PC
games in the 90's and early 2000's before the public fell for mmo scam of the
late 90's which put PC gaming on the path of massive game theft.

Valve is basically a criminal game stealing empire by infecting games with
client-server code. The whole industry wants to take us to mainframe dumb
client computing.

[https://tifca.com/wp-
content/uploads/2019/09/ClienttoCloud_V...](https://tifca.com/wp-
content/uploads/2019/09/ClienttoCloud_Vision_V2.pdf)

~~~
cameronbrown
> Valve is basically a criminal game stealing empire by infecting games with
> client-server code.

Uhh.. Valve release all their game server binaries for anyone to run, and
sometimes even the source code (Half-Life, Half-Life 2). If you're going to
rag on any games company, it shouldn't be them.

~~~
cameronbrown
(Replying to dead comment.)

> Valve did so because they had steam money to rely on, they were boiling the
> frog slowly.

Citation needed. Valve have been very good to the TF2/Dota 2 communities.
Again, you _can_ run the servers for these products. Worst comes to worst, if
Valve turns evil, then pirating the software is easy.

There's good points to be had that Overwatch is terrible for not releasing the
server, but Valve are not.

~~~
ptty56
You don't seem to understand VALVE is an outlier because they have so much
power, for the rest of the AAA game industry, dedicated servers largely have
been under attack. Because client-server and drm ridden software allows them
to put in game stores. They don't want people to have dedicated servers if it
interferes with their microtransaction business model. AKA in game stores
means further eroding software ownership.

You don't grasp the reason quake champions is a server locked game is because
of gamers buying client-server coded software.

You're a corporate fanboy. You don't grasp the reason Doom 2016 and no level
editor is specifically because of the last 15 years of the war on PC game
ownerhsip that began with mmo's in the late 90's.

That all those "MMO/freetoplay" games on steam would have been boxed products
with lan/server exe's in a former era, of the public had not taken them up to
begin with, valve would have never come up with STEAM. Steam was a direct
reaction to ultima online.

Valves long term plan was to remove ownership from his customers, and valve no
longer needs to produce games because their long term agenda was making money,
they want to be the middleman that skims money from every game sold.

------
panpanna
First of all, I don't understand why Microsoft is doing this. They are making
more from online services than they ever made from selling windows licences so
it's not like they need the few cents advertising generates. Probably the
windows group trying to up their own numbers, not noting they are hurting the
company as whole.

With that said, I don't consider all things author disabled as "ads". Some are
just annoying attempts to get people to explore w10 and the included software.

What I consider ads are:

1\. The stupid preinstalled games and apps that fill your start screen upon
your first boot.

2\. The preinstalled Microsoft games (these contain actual ads)

3\. The third party app suggestions.

~~~
greggman3
I recently got a new "Microsoft Ergonomic Desktop" keyboard. It has a the
"Office key" which if you press launches an ad to buy Microsoft Office. AFAICT
there is no official way to disable it!!! and at least for me it was easy to
hit by mistake.

Apple isn't as bad but I run into ads for Apple Music on my iPhone
unintentionally in a similar fashion. Meaning have no intent of ever
subscribing to Apple Music but Apple has designed the UX so that users are
likely to hit the ad to sign up from time to time.

~~~
fenwick67
Honestly I would jam a paperclip under that key to disable it out of spite

~~~
maalicious
You mean Clippy?

------
superasn
Windows 10 was the final push for me to switch to Linux once and for all. And
so far I'm super happy with it. I'm using Linux mint and I must recommended it
highly for any long time windows user as they've hugely reduced the learning
curve.

The only thing I miss is Photoshop. I've tried so many alternatives like gimp,
etc but I find graphics editing a big struggle, for example I can't even do
simple things like adding a red arrow to a screenshot till date without
googling for it first. Also wine it didn't work for me for some reason. But
thankfully my graphics requirements are pretty less so I boot up windows for
that, other than that I don't miss Windows at all now. Rather it would be very
hard to go back now.

~~~
overlordalex
Photoshop was a big one that I missed, until someone posted their self-made
online editor to reddit:
[https://www.photopea.com/](https://www.photopea.com/)

I'm not sure what modern photoshop looks like, but the interface is completely
familiar to me as a former CS2 user.

While Photopea is online, its completely satisfactory for small editing tasks
that I need to do. Only gripe is that saving massive pngs with 100% quality
causes the site to freeze

~~~
ptero
Photoshop is the main reason I still have a Windows boot on my home desktop. I
wish Linux had a comparable alternative to Photoshop (for which I would gladly
pay a sum comparable to what I paid Adobe). Any time I tried Gimp or something
similar I really missed the clean _visual_ UI of CS, ability to accurately
work with at least 16-bit color and support for printing large files (say,
17x40" panoramas) without killing my workstation.

~~~
RMPR
What about Krita?

~~~
ptero
I have not tried Krita yet. It seemed to be geared to artists drawing /
creating images, where my main (in fact only) use case is enhancement of my
DSLR or phone-captured photos. That said, Krita is on my "to try sometime"
list.

------
Nextgrid
The solution is to send a clear signal to Microsoft that their behaviour is
unacceptable by switching to Mac or Linux.

~~~
darrmit
This. And if the next version of macOS is any more of a dumpster fire than
Catalina it may narrow the list down even further.

~~~
lifthrasiir
For me Catalina is already a dumpster. In fact, it had been so since Sierra
(when, for example, the default Korean keyboard layout was silently changed to
include a Won sign in place of a backquote) so that I had been very reluctant
to update; I only updated to Mojave months ago.

------
s9w
For me the routine is always the same: Install Open Shell to make it look
reasonable and then ShutUp10 for things under the hood. While that may seem
too much work, it has honestly always been like that. I remember tweaking
Win98 and the massive tweaking community around win XP.

[https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu](https://github.com/Open-
Shell/Open-Shell-Menu)

[https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10](https://www.oo-
software.com/en/shutup10)

------
towndrunk
I highly recommend using this to configure Windows:

[https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-
Script](https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script)

------
thrwyoilarticle
My experience with troubleshooting on Windows has led to a lot of websites
like this - no-name businesses, a wall of ads, and SEO-optimised content
derived from performing the same web search I'm doing.

Unless I add 'Ubuntu' to the search term, troubleshooting on Linux OSes tends
to take me to primary sources e.g. internet-hosted manpages and docs.

It's probably just an inevitability of success but it does make the ecosystem
more frustrating to use.

~~~
lucb1e
> It's probably just an inevitability of success but it does make the
> ecosystem more frustrating to use.

For searching online, probably yes. If Linux were used by all the people
currently using Windows, there would surely be just as much crap.

But for the OS itself, if the current (open) development models of most
distributions would remain open and not become like Canonical's Ubuntu, I
don't see that such an OS would ever get ads or become frustrating to use as a
law of nature. Volunteers don't do work they don't believe in, few people
would work on a change or feature they don't think will be an improvement.

------
mariuz
Windows 10 is practically adware [https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-
microsoft.html](https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-microsoft.html)

------
dmortin
I use Windows (not 10), I like the convenience of it that most things, drivers
work out of the box.

But given the direction Microsoft is going it's likely my next machine will
run Linux. All the software I use is available for Linux too, so I guess the
main unconvenience will be that I'll have to pay attention when buying
hardware to make sure there are proper Linux drivers for them.

I guess there are plenty of people using Windows for convenience, but if the
longer trend is that it will have ads, I'll need a Microsoft account to run
it, etc. then many of those people who know their way around computer OSs may
switch to Linux instead.

~~~
rbinv
Why not a Mac? Seems like it would tick most of your boxes.

~~~
dmortin
I don't like Apple's business strategy of overpricing. A linux laptop is much
cheaper and for my purposes just as suitable.

------
shp0ngle
I follow those 3 steps:

1\. Buy LTSC license from sketchy resellers on eBay (I found out it's usually
the same Vietnamese guy with 100 of different usernames)

2\. Install Windows LTSC

3\. Enable Windows Store in LTSC by this repo -
[https://github.com/11lein/LTSC-Add-
MicrosoftStore](https://github.com/11lein/LTSC-Add-MicrosoftStore) (it's a
fork of some other repo that doesn't work for me that much)

LTSC is available to buy legally too, but it costs around 300$... all the
"bulk resellers" are kind of sketchy. But hey it usually works.

~~~
NullPrefix
With commits named "nothing"[0] the repo is surely trustworthy

0: [https://github.com/11lein/LTSC-Add-
MicrosoftStore/commit/b5b...](https://github.com/11lein/LTSC-Add-
MicrosoftStore/commit/b5b2fc94504a1eeb0f87aafc620ca40a389d8dca)

~~~
Wowfunhappy
You can also just skip that step if you don't use the Microsoft Store. It's
what I do.

~~~
shp0ngle
There are sometimes utilites only available on Store nowadays.

If there is an edition that has Store, but doesn’t have ads, and doesn’t cost
300 usd, I would prefer to use that...

~~~
type0
Windows S stands for Store (I think) and you can't install anything on it
otherwise. Had an impression that it was ad free but I'm not completely sure.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Windows LTSC ≠ Windows S

~~~
type0
That I know, but the question is whether or not it's free from ads.

------
AegirLeet
The fact that this is necessary at all is completely ridiculous. Thanks, but
I'll just stick with Windows 7 for my Windows machine. That works and doesn't
have any of 10's bullshit.

------
pcdoodle
After using windows since 95, I can't do it anymore. It doesn't feel like its
my computer.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
> Someone cleverly pointed out that Windows changed from "My Computer" to
> "This PC" in recent years. \- arwhatever on Microsoft has removed the “use
> offline account” op...
> ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21104910](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21104910))

------
Havoc
Maybe I've just become blind to them but I don't recall seeing any?

~~~
zokier
I think it is fascinating that there seems to be huge differences between the
amount of ads seen. Not being signed in to Microsoft account probably is the
single biggest factor, followed by having Pro edition and being located in EU
instead of US. And of course not having an OEM edition. Obviously I opt-outed
everything during installation, but I don't remember going through any special
hoops in at any stage.

While I can't say that I haven't seen any ads, they have been singular events
(I think at least one for O365, OneDrive, and Edge, maybe something else too)
instead of any sort of constant stream. Of course it is valid to argue that
any ads, however few, are too many, and I don't disagree. But I definitely do
not remember seeing any third-party ads in my Windows 10 and I think that is
pretty important distinction.

But as someone who has become extremely wary of installing any mobile apps due
the infestation of ads there, I feel my desktop to still be pretty decent
oasis against ads.

~~~
Havoc
All plausible

Signed in, pro but off an enterprise sub, not EU but probably counted as EU
for this. Actual I do recall seeing an add for office a couple years back

------
rhexs
I've been using O&O's shutup10 ([https://www.oo-
software.com/en/shutup10](https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10)) as the
first step after a fresh install for years. Anything better, or is this still
a good solution?

------
Causality1
I still remember the feeling of dread in my stomach the first time I used
Windows 10 and realized Microsoft had added a lock screen I had to click past
to get to the login screen. On a desktop OS. Just because smartphone sales
were booming and that's what smartphones do.

------
esotericn
Personally I'd rather just hold my knife by the handle end rather than trying
to sand down the serrated bits!

------
takeda
Frankly, what keeps me on Windows are just games, if I would be able to play
all the AAA titles on Linux, it would be my desktop. I can't think of any
other thing that keeps me on Windows.

------
unnouinceput
In regards to his tip "Disable advertisements from File Explorer". Also after
clicking "Apply" do chose the upper button on same window that says "Apply to
folders" \- it will make the settings done there to be applied to folders of
same "style". One only need to apply this to local drives, documents,
pictures, videos and a few other "styles" to have an unified view of all
folders when using Windows File Explorer.

But I recommend using Total Commander instead (personal favorite).

------
Ronsenshi
Ironic, given how the website itself is packed to the brim with ads.

~~~
beefhash
Everybody hates ads until it comes to their own bottom line, I guess.
Exceptions apply, of course.

~~~
psychoslave
Something you hate, is something you would like to track and destroy. But it's
all the opposite: that's ads which want to track you.

Now please consider getting a copy of my last new world exclusive publication
"The book I will never write" for free¹.

¹ First 42 microseconds are free of charge, after what you tacitly renew your
subscription into a premium plan, including a varying minute fee whose amount
will be changed at our will, and you concede the total complete worldwide
eternal exclusive rights on your soul. Download of this page is considered an
explicit consent. Any form of pleasure, displeasure, or any other form of
emotion risen during the reading of this text might be charged with extra fee.

------
spookybones
The Surface Pro briefly pulled me out of the Mac ecosystem. And I spun on my
heel and went right back at the sight of baked-in ads.

------
teddyc
Would love to see the PowerShell equivalent for these steps so it can be
automated / repeated.

~~~
majkinetor
[https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-
Windows-10](https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10)

------
garraeth
I'm surprised no one has mentioned O&O ShutUp10 ([https://www.oo-
software.com/en/shutup10](https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10)).

I've used it on my Windows computers for years and never see ads.

------
christophilus
Step 1: Format

Step 2: Install Linux

~~~
theredbox
If only Linux had as nice and frictionless experience as Windows or Mac.

Linux on desktop is somewhat bearable with the right distro but on a laptop
it's a big no no (terrible battery life etc).

~~~
cosmojg
Huh? I get a full work day and then some (~10 hours) out of my Dell XPS 13
running Linux. Quit spreading bullshit. Linux has come a long way, to the
point where I and many of my colleagues genuinely prefer the experience over
that of Windows or macOS. Maybe you should give it another try yourself. I
recommend Manjaro over Ubuntu for newcomers nowadays.

~~~
theredbox
Quit acting like a religious fundamentalist. Goodbye.

------
xmichael99
Is there no magic script or program out there that will just do this for my
lazy ass? (:

------
bufordtwain
Does anyone know how to disable the "Like what you see" text that is shown
over the lock screen images (also known as spotlight images)? If you click on
that text Bing comes up in a browser after you login. I've followed some
online guides but so far no luck getting rid of it.

~~~
detritus
It drives me nuts how complicated it is to simply have ALL of those
'spotlight' images at login nixed. I don't want any stock photography of
landscapes or whatever, thanks - I just want a plain black background.

Unless something's changed in the year or so since I last tried it, it's
basically not possible (there was some hacky solution, but it dismayed me, so
I never bothered).

~~~
shawnz
Just go to Settings > Personalize > Lock Screen and disable Windows Spotlight.

Unfortunately there's no way to get the pictures without the text overlays.

EDIT: In fact it's the first suggestion in the article.

~~~
detritus
Hmph, are you on Pro? I've only got the consumer version of Win10, and I can't
see that option... .

~~~
shawnz
I am using Pro (which is also a consumer version of Win10), but Home also has
the option.

See: [https://i.imgur.com/mzXI6Em.png](https://i.imgur.com/mzXI6Em.png)

~~~
detritus
Well I'm a fucking idiot, it's right there.

Thanks!

------
fuzzy2
You can keep Spotlight on the lock screen. You have to turn on the "Require
Ctrl-Alt-Del" option though.

------
downvoteme1
This is mostly click bait . The first 3 mentioned by the author are not ads.
If you are a new windows user, those tips and tricks are somewhat useful as
they tell you what’s new in Windows 10 compared to Windows 7 or an older
version.

~~~
cma
The first (lockscreen thing) is definitely an ad. If you misclick by accident
trying to type your password, you get sent to a bing site opened in edge
regardless of if edge is even your default browser. It will then nag prompt to
switch to edge which could bring in a good bit of money for MS.

I guarantee that factored into their decision to add it far more than "this
would be a fun thing to innocently engage users with."

------
ydb
It may go against the grain here, but I think advertisements in Windows 10 is
crucial. It's strange, because you would expect the HN audience to be in favor
of getting products in front of eyeballs.

Operating systems in 2020 have evolved into thought systems that enable our
lives in the emergent digital economy. Think of it like real-estate in the
"real" world. People hate billboards because they're gaudy, yet they relish
Times Square. Operating Systems are like the Times Square of the computing
world, allowing us to navigate and consume and vote with our dollars. It makes
total sense for them to contain advertisements. In fact, I encourage it.

~~~
detaro
Are you in favor of your landlord or the HOA replacing your wallpaper with
advertisement too? My desktop environment's role in my life is much more like
that than Time Square's.

