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Cortana-Feature

Microsoft has decided that Cortana, its personal digital assistant, is and so useful that you'll never be able to disable it going forward. While Cortana has received a diverseness of upgrades in the Ceremony Update, and now supports multiple languages, deeper integration with calendars and applications, and can think random facts virtually you, information technology can't be flatly shut off any longer.

Microsoft has confirmed that this behavior is intention and is the result of integrating Cortana directly into Microsoft's search box. With the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, the search box is now Cortana," Microsoft told PC World. "Customers can await the same great search experience powered past Bing and Microsoft Edge with the added benefit of Cortana'southward personality."

You can nonetheless disable Cortana'south ability to collect information, stop her from collecting data about you, or connecting to various applications. Her behaviors, in other words, can withal be controlled, including whether or not she listens for your vocalization, how much information she collects, and how personalized your own search results are. What isn't controllable, going forward, is turning Cortana off and just using a "standard" Windows search bar. From this point forrard, Cortana and search are the same thing.

Cortana-GPEdit

Currently, Cortana can be turned off via Gpedit.msc. Presumably the update breaks this pick.

At that place are still some questions to how all this will work in practice. Presumably while Microsoft claims you won't be able to disable Cortana, y'all'll still be able to use Windows Search when you aren't continued to the Internet. The alternative, if you don't want to utilize Cortana at all, appears to be to periodically flush whatever information the automobile has picked upwards nigh you and to use a third-political party search utility.

The alternative, if y'all don't desire to apply Cortana, is to use a third-political party search utility, continue using Windows 7 or viii.i, or switch to Linux. Alternatively, you lot can download a copy of the original Windows ten build and then turn off Windows Update as soon every bit y'all install the operating arrangement. The problem with going that route is that you won't receive any security updates, either — and there'due south no longer any way to distinguish betwixt updates yous do desire and updates you don't desire in Windows 10.

How well this plays with users will depend on how locked-downwardly Cortana can be in the Anniversary Update. It looks like all of the same features and functionality tin exist close off, which would imply that Microsoft has basically renamed its search functions. If, on the other hand, Microsoft has stepped up the amount of data it relays behind the scenes, this could easily acrimony its user base of operations yet again.