If you are someone who likes to have control over what is running and not running in Windows 11, you can disable the background apps.
An application that remains active in the background occupies system processes. A lot of these unused processes running in the background can cause your computer slow down. It also shortens the battery life if your laptop is not connected to the mains.
It is therefore advisable to decide for yourself whether an application should remain active in the background or not. By determining for yourself which app is or is not active in the background, you can make a significant difference save memory and shorten the computer startup time.
Disable background apps in Windows 11
If you wish to disable background apps, you can do this via the settings.
Disable background apps via settings
Open the settings. In the settings, click on “apps” and then on “installed apps”.
In the list of installed apps, you need to change all the apps whose background process you want to disable.
You do this by clicking on the three vertical dots to the right of the app. Then click on “advanced options” in the menu. So you do this for each app separately.
To disable the background app, change the “Allow this app to run in the background” setting to “Never”.
There are two other options. This is the “Always” option, which is self-explanatory. The other is the “Power Optimized” option. This limits the app's CPU and memory usage. This optimizes Windows 11 itself depending on the selected energy plan and whether the computer or laptop is connected to the power grid.
Disable background apps via Windows registry
If you want to disable all background apps at once and prevent background apps from running at all, you can use the Windows registry.
Please note that certain apps may no longer function properly if they are not running in the background. I don't recommend this option for someone who doesn't know exactly what he or she is doing. If you continue, follow the steps exactly, modifying the Windows registry is risky.
Open the Windows registry. Go to the key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\
Right-click on “Windows” and click “New” and then “Key”. Name this key “AppPrivacy”.
Now right-click on the “AppPrivacy” key again and click on “New” and then on “DWORD 32-bit Value”. Name this value “LetAppsRunInBackground”. Double-click it and set the value data to “2”.
Restart your computer to make the policy active. There are now no more apps running in the background.
Read more: Disable startup apps in Windows 11.
I hope to have informed you with this. Thank you for reading!