Sticking With Windows 10? Change These Default Settings

Microsoft launched Win­dows 11, its lat­est oper­at­ing sys­tem, last Octo­ber. The OS reached broad deploy­ment ear­li­er this year after a stag­gered roll­out span­ning half a year, mean­ing it’s now ready for all com­pat­i­ble com­put­ers. (Here’s how to down­load it if you’re ready.) How­ev­er, the sys­tem require­ments for Win­dows 11 mean that old­er com­put­ers may need to con­tin­ue run­ning Win­dows 10. And like any oper­at­ing sys­tem, Win­dows 10 has a few default set­tings that are less than ideal.

Some are just annoy­ing (you don’t real­ly need Cor­tana “get­ting to know you”), while oth­ers will actu­al­ly slow down your device, show you tons of noti­fi­ca­tions and ads and col­lect more of your infor­ma­tion than you might be com­fort­able with. As long as Win­dows 10 is still what’s pow­er­ing your com­put­er, it’s worth it to opti­mize your set­tings to make sure your PC is run­ning the best it can.

You’ll want to spend just a few min­utes look­ing into these set­tings and poten­tial­ly turn­ing them off, for the sake of pri­va­cy, speed and con­ve­nience. Here are sev­en default set­tings that you can dis­able in Win­dows 10. (You can also check out some top Win­dows 10 tips and tricks and how to trou­bleshoot com­mon Win­dows 10 prob­lems.)

File-sharing updates

A fea­ture Win­dows 10 added is an opti­mized update deliv­ery sys­tem that lets you down­load updates from oth­er Win­dows 10 com­put­ers over the Inter­net (not just from Microsoft­’s servers). The catch is that your com­put­er is also used as an update-shar­ing hub for oth­er Win­dows 10 users.

This fea­ture is turned on by default, but you can turn it off by going to Set­tings > Update & secu­ri­ty > Advanced options > Deliv­ery opti­miza­tion and tog­gling off Allow down­loads from oth­er PCs.

Annoying notifications

The Win­dows 10 Action Cen­ter is a handy cen­tral hub for all of your noti­fi­ca­tions — apps, reminders, recent­ly installed pro­grams. But noti­fi­ca­tion over­load is def­i­nite­ly a thing, espe­cial­ly when you add unnec­es­sary noti­fi­ca­tions (such as Win­dows tips) into the mix.

To get your noti­fi­ca­tions under con­trol, go to Set­tings > Sys­tem > Noti­fi­ca­tions & actions.

Turn off things like “Get tips, tricks and sug­ges­tions when you use Win­dows” or “Show me the Win­dows wel­come expe­ri­ence after updates and occa­sion­al­ly when I sign in to high­light what’s new and sug­gest­ed” as well as any unwant­ed noti­fi­ca­tions from indi­vid­ual apps.

Start menu ads

Microsoft push­es its Win­dows Store apps — so much so that you may be see­ing apps you nev­er down­loaded in your Start menu. These sug­gest­ed apps are basi­cal­ly ads.

Turn off these pesky ads by going to Set­tings > Per­son­al­iza­tion > Start > Show sug­ges­tions occa­sion­al­ly in Start. For more infor­ma­tion, check out our Win­dows 10 Start menu guide.

Targeted ads from third-party apps

Microsoft is def­i­nite­ly keep­ing tabs on your pref­er­ences and brows­ing habits in Win­dows 10. You even have a unique adver­tis­ing ID (tied to your Microsoft account), which the com­pa­ny uses to show you tar­get­ed ads. Oh, and Microsoft also shares this adver­tis­ing ID pro­file with third-par­ty apps from the Win­dows Store, unless you turn this infor­ma­tion shar­ing off.

You can turn off shar­ing this type of info by going to Set­tings > Pri­va­cy > Gen­er­al and tog­gling off Let apps use adver­tis­ing ID to make ads more inter­est­ing to you based on your app activ­i­ty (Turn­ing this off will reset your ID).

Cortana ‘getting to know you’

Cor­tana, your adap­tive per­son­al assis­tant in Win­dows 10, gets, well, pret­ty per­son­al with the infor­ma­tion it col­lects about you, such as speech and hand­writ­ing pat­terns and typ­ing his­to­ry, which you may con­sid­er to be just a lit­tle creepy.

You can stop Cor­tana from “get­ting to know you,” and clear that infor­ma­tion from your device, by going to Set­tings > Pri­va­cy > Ink­ing & typ­ing and tog­gling the option off.

Apps running in the background

In Win­dows 10, by default, many apps run in the back­ground (even if you don’t have them open). These apps can receive infor­ma­tion, send noti­fi­ca­tions, down­load and install updates and oth­er­wise use up your band­width and your bat­tery. If you’re using a mobile device and/or a metered con­nec­tion, you may want to turn this fea­ture off.

To do so, go to Set­tings > Pri­va­cy > Back­ground apps and either tog­gle off Let apps run in the back­ground or tog­gle off each app individually.

All the syncing

Win­dows 10 is all about sync­ing. Every­thing (sys­tem set­tings, themes, pass­words, search his­to­ry) syncs across all your signed-in devices by default. But not all of us want our search his­to­ry to sync between our phones and our com­put­ers, so here’s how to turn sync­ing off.

To turn off set­tings sync­ing (includ­ing themes and pass­words), go to Set­tings > Accounts > Sync your set­tings. You can turn off all set­tings sync­ing, or you can selec­tive­ly turn off spe­cif­ic settings.

For more, check out the best Win­dows 11 fea­tures and how to use them and every­thing to know about upgrad­ing from Win­dows 10 to Win­dows 11.