Cortana is Microsoft’s answer to Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri, etc. It can help in booking meetings, sending emails, searching locations, finding rides, etc. However, there are people on both sides of the fence.
Enabling (or Disabling) Cortana
So we are here to help both groups and see how to enable/disable Cortana. While it seems a standard feature to turn it off or on, it’s not available in Windows settings or anything similar. It involves group policy or registry editing, which you’ll easily do after this tutorial. Let’s get started.
Using Group Policy Editor
Open Windows Run by pressing ⊞+R, type gpedit.msc, and press enter. Next, navigate to Computer Configuration>Administrative Templates>Windows Components>Search>Allow Cortana. Finally, choose Enabled/Disabled, click Apply, then press OK.
Using Registry Editor
Enabling Cortana is even easier from the registry editor. First, type regedit in the Windows run and press enter. Then navigate to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search. Alternatively, use the above path in the registry editor and hit enter to land there directly: Subsequently, double-click over AllowCortana, change the Value data from 0 to 1 to activate it and press OK. To disable Cortana, change this value to 0 and click OK.
Bottom Line
This article aimed to enable or disable Cortana after the initial Windows setup. You can do this by Group policy or registry editing. Cortana can help in getting little things done with ease. Still, many users avoid these digital personal assistants citing various reasons, including privacy. But there is no denying these robo assistants are far from ideal, and it’ll be interesting to see how they shape the future of voice search.
