Cortana is a virtual personal productivity assistant that uses the search engine Bing to perform tasks such as setting reminders, answering questions, managing calendars and other productivity tasks.
Some people find Cortana very useful, others not at all. It is possible to enable or disable Cortana in Windows 11. Cortana is preinstalled on your computer but is not enabled by default. If you are not going to use it in the future, you can uninstall Cortana. If you are going to use it, you will want to enable it, you can also read about this in this article.
Related: Remove Cortana from Windows 10.
Enable or disable Cortana in Windows 11
How to disable Cortana in Windows 11
If you don't use Cortana but don't want to remove it, you can disable Cortana. You then change the permissions within Windows 11 for Cortana to off. This concerns the Microphone permissions and the Cortana startup program.
Right-click on the start button. Click on Settings in the menu.
Click on Apps in the left menu and then on Apps and features.
In the list of apps, search for “Cortana”. Click on the three vertical dots to the right of the Cortana result and click Advanced options.
Change the Cortana App Permissions for the Microphone to off. Change the setting: Runs at login also to off. click on Configure startup tasks to disable more apps.
If you do not use Cortana or will not use it, the Cortana app does not require microphone access and does not need to be started with Windows 11. By disabling these permissions, Cortana no longer uses system performance.
Remove Cortana in Windows 11
If you want to completely remove Cortana in Windows 11, you must remove a Windows component via PowerShell. It is not possible to activate Cortana via the Windows settings and then the remove app components.
- Click on the magnifying glass in the taskbar. In the search box type: powershell.
- Right-click on the powershell result and click Run as Administrator.
To Cortana for all delete users from the computer copy and paste the following line into the PowerShell window:
Get-AppxPackage -allusers Microsoft.549981C3F5F10 | Remove-AppxPackage
You will first see a few blue lines and then it will remain empty. No result appears on the screen. If you search for Cortana on your computer, you will immediately notice that Cortana has been removed in Windows 11.
Install Cortana in Windows 11
If you have removed Cortana and you want to start using Cortana again, you can install Cortana back in Windows 11. You must Download and install Cortana again. Click the link and follow the instructions on the Microsoft website to install Cortana.
I hope this helped you. Thank you for reading!
Wow, how stupid of me Stefan 😮
Thanks for the quick response, I've gotten rid of Cortana now 👍
What am I doing wrong or should I do to make it work?
When I follow the instructions I see the following:
'Get-AppxPackage -allusers Microsoft.549981C3F5F10 | Remove-AppxPackage
Get-AppxPackage : Access denied.
Access denied.
At line: 1 char: 1
+ Get-AppxPackage -allusers Microsoft.549981C3F5F10 | Remove-AppxPackag…
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [Get-AppxPackage], UnauthorizedAccessException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.UnauthorizedAccessException,Microsoft.Windows.Appx.PackageManager.Commands.GetApp
xPackageCommand'
(' and ' mine).
Thank you!
gr. Luc:
Hello, have you run powershell as administrator? This is stated in the instructions. If I run powershell without 'as administrator' I get the same error. So this is the problem.
Success!