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How to disable Cortana in Windows 10

Windows 10 comes with a new feature ported over from Windows Phone - a Siri-like voice assistant called Cortana. You can ask Cortana to look up information using your speech. On a mobile phone, it makes sense to use such a feature. However on a PC where your microphone is far from your mouth and you have a full keyboard at your disposal, it doesn't make sense to use Cortana. You can look up the same information faster. So if you do not plan to use Cortana or get annoyed by it, then here is how you can disable Cortana in Windows 10. Also, we will see how to get rid of the Cortana icon/search box in the taskbar.

To disable Cortana in Windows 10, you need to do the following:

  1. Open Cortana from the taskbar.
  2. Click the hamburger icon in the top left and pick the Settings item inside the menu:cortana settings in Windows 10
  3. Toggle the switch that says "Do you want Cortana to work for you?" to "Off":disable cortana in Windows 10

That's it. Now let's disable the search box in the taskbar.

  1. Right click the taskbar
  2. Go to the Search item in the context menu.
  3. Set it to "Show search icon" to get only the icon in the taskbar:show search icon
    It will show a search icon instead of the text box:
    search icon Windows 10
  4. To disable it completely, set to Search to "Disabled":
    disable search taskbar windows 10
    This is the result:
    taskbar no search button in Windows 10

You are done.

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Author: Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

4 thoughts on “How to disable Cortana in Windows 10”

  1. Yea,I wanted to try out Cortana in VMware , but i can’t because speech failed to start or I need to make sure that mic is working(on my PC working,whatelse) :(
    I’m sad that Microsoft joke me and she will can be in Czech.

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