The operating system has an unfortunate tendency to force the hand when it comes to installing third-party applications on a recent system. Here’s how to stop it.
If you received a brand new PC for Christmas, you may have noticed that after you set it up for the first time, Windows displays suggested apps to install among the tiles displayed in the Start menu.
From Netflix to Twitter to Candy Crush, Microsoft’s operating system displays a whole bunch of app suggestions that end up polluting your machine.
While it’s fortunately easy enough to get rid of – a simple right-click on the tiles is enough to display an uninstall button – it is possible to prevent Windows 10 from showing these suggestions once and for all. Here’s how to do it.
1. Open the registry editor
Start by opening the Windows Registry Editor. To do this you can click on the start menu, then type registry in the search field and right click on Registry Editor to Open it as administrator.
You can also use the Windows + R keyboard shortcut to open the Run command, then grab regedit.exe and click on OK to Validate.
2. Navigate to the key
In the main text field of the window copy and paste the following line to navigate to the registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion ContentDeliveryManager
You can also manually navigate to the various directories from the left column of the Windows Registry Editor.
3. Modify the value
Among the various values displayed, locate the one titled SilentInstalledAppsEnabled.
Then double-click on it and change its value data to 0 to deactivate the Windows suggested applications function. Validate by clicking on OK.
If the value does not exist on your machine, right click on the ContentDeliveryManager directory in the left column, go to the New menu, and choose to create a 32-bit DWORD Value that you will name SilentInstalledAppsEnabled and to which you give the value 0.
4. Restart your PC
Close Windows Registry Editor and restart your computer. The operating system should no longer display app suggestions in the Start menu. However, you will have to manually uninstall those already present.
Note that it is possible to go even further by uninstalling all software and services preinstalled on Windows 10 using a simple application.