Head to the 'Privacy & security' section of Settings, then select General and turn off every last toggle you see. The first step is to delete your advertising ID, which is the anonymized profile Microsoft populates with usage data to create an impression of you (via Microsoft). At times, Windows 11 begins to feel like an ad platform that just happens to let you run programs inside of it.įortunately, most Windows 11 ads are opt-out. While some of these products are decent, the incessant bombarding of users with ads for them is disrespectful to Windows users and gets in the way of productivity. Microsoft is aggressively pushing subscriptions for its OneDrive cloud storage and Microsoft 365 (which includes the Office suite), along with its Slack and Zoom competitor Teams and its Edge browser. So, from the merely annoying to the rage-inducing and productivity-choking, here are some Windows 11 PC settings that are ruining your experience. Additionally, it's clear that Microsoft is now fully in the data collection business, as nearly every corner of Windows 11 seems designed to track users for diagnostics and ads while aggressively pushing Microsoft's proprietary services. There are some options that would make life easier which are turned off by default, and others turned on that make things harder. The visual elements take cues from Windows Vista (the most aesthetically pleasing version of Windows despite its faults) while retaining some of what worked best in Windows 10, and the OS supports plenty of future-proof technologies.īut that doesn't mean it's perfect, especially when it comes to the way Microsoft has Windows 11's settings configured by default. After a few major updates (what would have been called Service Packs in previous Windows eras), most of the major annoyances and kinks have been worked out, and it is a significant improvement over Windows 10 in a lot of ways. Windows 11 is not the disappointment many of its detractors claimed upon the OS's initial release.

Windows 11 pc