Disable Cortana on Windows 10? Doesn’t sound right? Well, you may still need to disable Cortana in Windows 10 as it can eat up your data bandwidth. How to do it? Here in this post, I will be showing you how to do it. Cortana was one of the most hyped features of Windows 10 as it brought the first ever personal voice-based assistant to the Windows PC. The Cortana was already available for Windows Phone OS running devices (will be known as Windows 10 for mobile after the public release) and now its debut in Windows PC OS is indeed a welcome move. It is an advanced feature introduced in Windows 10 and can accept multiple inputs including gesture and voice inputs. The Cortana keeps running in the background while being connected to the internet to get results quickly for your search keywords. This shouldn’t be a problem to the users with unlimited internet bandwidth over WiFi. However, someone with metered connection or limited internet bandwidth would not like an app to eat up his bandwidth just to keep the Cortana running. Cortana requires you to be logged in to the PC using the Microsoft account to be active as the service is still available in only selected regions. So, to keep Cortana quite, you can log into your local user account and avoid using the Microsoft user account on your PC. The second method to disable Cortana is to rename Cortana folder from the System Apps section in Windows 10. In this post, we will see both the methods to disable Cortana completely in Windows 10. Disable Cortana in Windows 10 Completely Method 1: Login to Local User Account As I mentioned earlier, the best way to keep Cortana quite is to use the Local User Account in you Windows 10 PC. Since Cortana requires Microsoft User account to work, you can disable it using the Local user account. If you haven’t created a local user account in your Windows 10, then you should create one. You can learn more about creating a local user account with administrative rights in Windows 10 from here. Method 2: Rename Microsoft Cortana System folder At times, you may need to switch to the Microsoft Account from the Local user account as some features in Windows 10 would require you to have logged in with Microsoft account ID to work properly. And you won’t be able to stop Cortana from using your internet bandwidth when logged in with Microsoft User account. In this case, you can still disable Cortana in Windows 10, but for that, you need to edit the Cortana system folder from the System Apps section. Follow these steps to know how to do it. Note: Before you proceed with editing the files, it is recommended that you create a System Restore Point in Windows 10 and then move to disabling Cortana steps given below. You can create a System Restore Point in Windows 10 by going to Control Panel, click on System, finally click on System Protection from the left pane. Click on Create from the bottom of the pop-up Window. Now follow on-screen instructions and create a Restore Point in Windows 10. 1. Open Task Manager by right-clicking on the Task Bar and selecting Task Manager. Alternatively, press Ctrl Shift Esc to open the Task Manager in Windows 10. 2. Once you are in the Task Manager, search and locate Cortana process. Once found, right-click on it and select Open file location. 3. This will open your Windows System Apps folder. Here you have to rename the Cortana folder named as “Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy”. 4. Now before you rename the folder, you have to kill the Cortana process from the Task Manager. Else, you will see an error message “the action can’t be completed because the folder or a file in it is open in another program. Close this folder and try again”. To do this, go to Task Manager, find the Cortana process again and click on End Task button. This will end the Cortana process in your PC. 5. Now you have to rename the folder Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy to Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy.old. During the renaming process, you will be asked to provide administrator permission to complete the renaming task. Click on Continue and rename the folder. Once the folder is renamed successfully, Cortana will stop working on your Windows 10 PC. Additionally, if you want to remove the Cortana search bar from the Taskbar, then right-click on it (Taskbar), go to Cortana and select “Hidden” option. This will allow you to have more free space to pin more shortcuts to the Taskbar. To enable Cortana in the future, you need to rename the folder to its default name or original name as it was before renaming it. Troubleshooting: It may happen that while trying to rename the folder, the process may not have completed successfully, and you may face problems with your Windows 10. After the reboot, you may see a delay in Start button and also the Search function may not work in Windows 10. To fix this follow the solutions given below. In most of the cases, it should fix the problem with Start button delay and Windows 10 search function not working. Fix Start button Delay in Windows 10 Go to C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy in Windows 10. Search for searchUI.exe. Right-click on it and select Rename. Rename searchUI.exe to searchUI-.exe. After renaming it, you should be able to fix delay in Start button problem in Windows 10. Fix Search Function Not Working Issue in Windows 10 If the search function is not working in Windows 10 after disabling Cortana then try this: To fix this, we will be using an inbuilt system file checker tool to repair the missing files. Open Command Prompt as administrator. Right-click on Start button and select Command Prompt (Admin). In the command prompt copy /paste following command and hit enter: sfc /scannow Hit enter to execute the command. Let the scanning and repairing process complete successfully. Once the process has been completed successfully, you should have search function working fine in Windows 10.
