
Turn Off Cortana Completely in Windows 10 Anniversary Update - bsilvereagle
http://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-tip-turn-off-cortana-completely/
======
mrweasel
Cortana is yet another feature, that you wouldn't turn on, if it was off by
default.

I don't truly understand the goal of Cortana, other than "Apple has Siri".
Some of the person assistant features seems handy, but do you really need to
talk to your computer? The only place where it seems like something I'd need
is when cooking and want to look up a recipe.

Microsoft efforts would have been better spend improving the built in search.

~~~
gbl08ma
You don't need to talk to use Cortana. I had Cortana disabled until the
Anniversary Update came. If you don't agree to letting it see your
emails/calendar/personal stuff, it will become a limited version of itself (in
fact, it didn't prompt me about it until I actively tried to do something that
needed it). I was OK with letting that limited version enabled, and thought I
would still not use even that.

A few days ago, however, I had to set a five minutes timer. It was much easier
to press the Windows key and type "set a timer for five minutes" than to go
search for whatever app is responsible for timers. I find the "grandma-
friendly command line" part of Cortana much more useful than the voice control
part, and I can see why it comes enabled by default. I mainly use Linux and
wish I had something like that in my KDE desktop (the Alt+F2 command bar is
similar, but nowhere close).

~~~
dietrichepp
You can do some of that online. Please forgive the LMGTFY link, since I'm
really just trying to demonstrate a feature of Google's search engine:

[http://lmgtfy.com/?q=5+minute+timer](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=5+minute+timer)

~~~
gbl08ma
Yeah, but I don't have Google mapped to a keyboard key, but even if I did,
googling for "5 minute timer" (and similar variants, like "1 minute timer" or
"30 seconds timer") yields the usual search results for me. At least Cortana
is (at least since the Anniversary Update) consistent with what features it
offers to each user, unlike Google which will randomly not present those
built-in tools. And since I can't try it, I'm wondering: to use Google's
timer, do I need to leave the tab open until it ends? Because in that case
it's nowhere as nice as Cortana, which just goes into background...

~~~
Sylos
I just tried it, and it seems to me like it shows the timer only on
google.com, not on the Google-domain for my country, so maybe that was a
factor. The other comment pointed out more inconsistencies, though, so might
really just be Google's algorithm judging at random who's allowed to get a
timer and who not.

DuckDuckGo's implementation [0] seems more robust to me, but if you don't use
it as your default search engine, it's probably easier anyways to just click
on the first link in the Google search results (or use Cortana obviously).

And yeah, you do need to leave the tab open until it ends. I don't see that as
that big of a flaw as you do, since most people have a browser open all the
time anyways, but yeah, whatever floats your boat. Certainly isn't terrible to
have another option for it.

[0]
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=5+minute+timer](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=5+minute+timer)

~~~
gbl08ma
Indeed DuckDuckGo's timer appears to be quite nice, I have it as my main
search engine but didn't notice it had that. It's probably a recent addition.
I agree that having to keep a browser tab open is not much of an issue, but
for longer timers (hours) that can be an issue (although for that case, alarms
are better suited... but then you need an alarm app, and while Cortana and
Google Now will AFAIK set the alarm on their respective platforms, DuckDuckGo
has no "platform" to do it...).

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sp332
Great, now we just need walkthroughs to turn off all the other hidden
features. How do I disable the feature where it's recording my games all the
time, invisibly, just in case I push a hotkey to save it? I've also heard that
it sends screenshots back to MS every few seconds and at this point that
doesn't even seem like a crazy conspiracy theory.

~~~
Someone1234
Load the XBox app, go into settings, slide the slider.

Yes it is a stupid default, no it is not sending screenshots back to
Microsoft.

~~~
sp332
Thanks. Do you know of a way to do this without an Xbox account?

Edit: Also in the general tab, disable "share clips and screenshots by
default". That's not as bad as automatically taking screenshots, but it's
still awful.

~~~
Someone1234
Run Powershell and execute this command:

Get-AppxPackage _xboxapp_ | Remove-AppxPackage

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laktak
I wouldn't bother. I'm pre-update and have turned it off when I installed
Windows 10.

Yet App history shows a cpu usage of 0:07:25 and network transfer of 1.5MB for
Cortana.

------
lousken
Has anybody found a way to fully disable the lockscreen? I don't wanna upgrade
unless I can fully disable it. I've tested a couple of solutions on another
PC, but it seems like it doesnt work on reboot or on the first boot.

~~~
sp332
\- Mods: Why don't I have a delete button for this post? I have a delete
button for my other post.

~~~
lousken
Sorry, I didn't say it properly - by completly disabling I meant the fact that
even with some of the tweaks the lockscreen kept appearing before the login
screen(e.g. after reboot). But I wanna keep the login screen while disabling
the lockscreen.

~~~
spencerflem
I've done it with a registry edit. It's such an irritating and pointless
"feature"

[http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/disable-lock-screen-
window...](http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/disable-lock-screen-windows-10)

~~~
lousken
Doesnt work for me in the anniversary update with w10 pro

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msmgtoolkit
I simply use MSMG Toolkit over at MDL forums, remove all the packages I don't
want prior to installing from ISO.

No cortana (warning: no start menu searching either), no modern apps (you can
intergrate calc.exe), no store, defender, remove alot of telemetry, one drive,
etc.

~~~
whatareyoureal
You don't trust Microsoft--who wrote the kernel and many of the drivers you're
using--but trust some random .exe from a forum?

~~~
msmgtoolkit
It's a readable .bat file, and all the executable dependencies are either from
microsoft (dism, etc) or offer source code and/or hashing.

At some point you have to trust something, whether it be your software or your
hardware.

Besides the telemetry stuff, it's not a trust issue. I just don't have a need
for any of the packages I remove. I don't need cortana and search, I don't
need Windows Defender and it's cloud features, I don't need onedrive, xbox,
modern apps, etc. It's my choice, so I remove them.

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pawadu
It seems the HN crowd (and zdnet and EFF) are all missing a very important
point: with the anniversary update (rolled out last week) Cortana is now much
much less intrusive. For example, you don't need to have GPS enabled att all
time in order to use Cortana.

So all in all, Microsoft seems to be on the right track regarding privacy. It
is not moving very fast but at least it is moving to the right direction.

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nashashmi
Cortana would have been far more often used if it was isolated to controlling
the OS, which i find it cannot do (well?).

Had there been another voice activated software to do searches on the
internet, like Samada, people would have utilized it better.

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WayneBro
I would have used an Android/iOS style dictation key on my Windows tablet
virtual keyboard.

That's the one thing I wanted from Windows 10. But no. They gave me this
useless Cortana bullshit that can only search with Bing.

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rasz_pl
why turn it off when you can uninstall COMPLETELY?

Windows10ReTweaker [http://win10epicfail.proboards.com/thread/100/interested-
par...](http://win10epicfail.proboards.com/thread/100/interested-
participating-tweaker-development-test)

