How to disable Copilot in Windows 11

How-to
By Peter Wolinski
published

Completely disable Copilot in Windows 11

The Microsoft Copilot splash page
(Image credit: Microsoft)
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If you want to learn how to disable Copilot in Windows 11, you wouldn't be alone. Microsoft's Copilot AI app has been around for a while now, essentially rolling up the Bing AI search app (and therefore Chat-GPT) into a dedicated app.

Now, Microsoft has integrated Copilot into Windows 11 itself, with a Copilot virtual button now present in the taskbar and Copilot physical buttons even appearing on computer keyboards. Clearly, Microsoft wants this to be a big part of Windows going forward.

Understandably, you may not want that. Well, the good news is that Copilot is easy to disable completely, and this guide is here to show you how.

How to disable Copilot in Windows 11

There are two ways to remove Copilot. The first simply removes the icon from your taskbar, which is all you may want. The second disables Copilot completely. This guide will cover both.

How to remove Copilot from your Taskbar in Windows 11

Here's how to remove Copilot from your Windows 11 taskbar if you no longer want it there. This doesn't disable Copilot completely (see next section).

1. Go to Settings > Personalization

(Image: © Future)

First up, open the Settings app and click Personalization.

2. Click Taskbar

(Image: © Future)

Now scroll down and select Taskbar.

3. Toggle off Copilot

(Image: © Future)

Finally, toggle off Copilot.

How to disable Copilot completely in Windows 11

Here's how to completely disable Copilot in Windows 11. If you want to enable it again at any point, simply follow these steps again and select "Not configured" or "Disabled" instead of "Enabled" in the last step.

1. Click Start and open the Group policy editor

(Image: © Future)

Click Start and search "gpedit" then open the Group policy editor when it appears.

2. Go to User configuration > Administrative templates > Windows components > Windows Copilot

(Image: © Future)

In the left hand panel, navigate to User configuration > Administrative templates > Windows components > Windows Copilot.

3. Double-click Turn off Windows Copilot

(Image: © Future)

Double click the Turn off windows Copilot policy on the right-hand panel.

4. Click Enabled > Apply > OK

(Image: © Future)

Click Enabled and click Apply then click OK. It seems counter intuitive to be clicking Enabled here, but we are enabling a policy to disable Copilot.

That's all there is to it. If you'd like more help with using Windows, we can show you how to enable God mode in Windows, how to get PowerToys in Windows, and how to move the taskbar in Windows 11.

Peter Wolinski
Peter Wolinski
Reviews Editor

Peter is Reviews Editor at Tom's Guide. As a writer, he covers topics including tech, photography, gaming, hardware, motoring and food & drink. Outside of work, he's an avid photographer, specialising in architectural and portrait photography. When he's not snapping away on his beloved Fujifilm camera, he can usually be found telling everyone about his greyhounds, riding his motorcycle, squeezing as many FPS as possible out of PC games, and perfecting his espresso shots. 

2 Comments Comment from the forums
  • A Thompson
    Thank you, this worked BUT FIRST I had to learn how to enable the gpeditor!

    https://www.itechtics.com/enable-gpedit-msc-windows-11/?utm_content=cmp-true
    Reply
  • meditek10
    Seems Gates has 'done something'. I cannot disable copilot in Win 11. None of the methods online work as the links to coplilot take you nowhere. Seems it has been rehoused and well hidden. I found a link to 'copilotdisable' in the registry but changing the Dword to 1 failed.
    winver 11 22631.3155 fully updated.
    Can anybody explain how to get rid of it?
    Reply