#prevent #Windows #showing #advertising
Windows has always tried to take advantage of various spaces in its operating system to show the user personalized ads for other applications or services. An example is the start menu, where, unless the user deactivates it, Windows will dedicate some of the spaces for product recommendations or promotions.
As various experts have been noticing, Microsoft is trying to optimize the deployment of advertising in Windows in order to maximize the benefit that the company obtains from this segment. Thus, in some developer versions of Windows 11, features have been detected that expand the possibilities to show the user products based on your interests. One way Windows disguises these advertising placements is to call them “tips” or “suggestions.”
The spaces that Microsoft is trying to take advantage of are the lock screen, the start menu, the Settings tool or the taskbar. This April 9, the X user @thebookisclosed shared a screenshot of a new recommendations section in the taskbar. Although this was a developer version, it fuels predictions that Windows will contain more advertising in the future.
Looks like the Start menu’s Recommended section will be getting app promotions, similar to suggested apps in Start in Windows 10. This can be toggled off from Settings (Show recommendations for tips, app promotions, and more). https://t.co/zYYnTKs9qw
April 11, 2024 • 09:59
Other possibilities that Windows has been exploring are using diagnostic data to target ads, third-party ads in Copilot, or ads in the “Get Help” tool.
If you don’t like personalized ads and want Windows to show you the least amount of advertising possible, you can follow the steps detailed below.
Debug the start menu and file explorer
To start, you can get rid of ads in the main system space by heading to the Windows prompt and typing “Startup Settings” in the search bar. Click on the first result and turn off the “Show recommendations for suggestions, shortcuts, new apps, and more” option.
So that Microsoft cannot use the file explorer for this purpose either, we do the following: in the window of any folder we click on the three dots icon. We go into “View” and uncheck the box that says “Show notifications from the sync provider.”
Turn off Windows suggestions
Along with the above, you can also ask the SO not to send you any type of suggestion or recommendation in general. To do this, click on the Windows symbol again and type “Notifications and Actions.” Click on the first section and enter the “Additional settings” section. There, uncheck the boxes for these three options:
- Shows the Windows welcome experience after updates and when you’re signed in to show what’s new and tips.
- Suggest ways to get the most out of Windows and finish setting up this device.
- Get recommendations and tips when using Windows.
The following image is an example of Bing search engine advertising in Windows 11, uploaded to X by @imhassan.
In addition to this, you can avoid targeted advertising in the Settings menu and other applications as follows: in the Windows search bar, type “Privacy Settings”. There, enter the first section that is shown and uncheck these two options:
- Allow apps to show personalized ads using my ID. of advertising.
- Show me suggested content in the Settings app.
Disable lock screen ads and notifications
To prevent Windows from using your lock screen to send you ads, press the Windows button and enter “Lock Screen Settings.” In the menu that opens, uncheck the box “Show interesting facts, recommendations, tips and more.”
Finally, to make sure that the applications do not launch advertising at us through notifications, click on the Windows symbol and look for “Turn Notifications On and Off.” We enter the first section and deactivate the Notifications box that says “Get notifications from applications and other senders.” If we do not want to miss the notifications from a specific app, we can activate those from a specific app below in the “Notifications from applications and other senders” section.
