How do I disable Cortana?

Q I am generally pleased with Windows 10 but would like to banish the annoying black box that appears on my desktop and asks me to type whatever I want to search for. How do I do that? Also, when I’m not using a mouse on this laptop it is prone to suddenly zoom into the page when I touch the touchpad. Any suggestions welcome. Mike Davenport

A By the ‘annoying black box’ we guess you mean Cortana, which is Windows 10’s pervasive search assistant. By default, it listens out for a user to speak aloud the phrase ‘Hey, Cortana’, but it also places a search box on the Taskbar — and we assume that’s the bit that bothers you.

If that’s the case and you merely want to get rid of the search box, then it’s easily done. First, right-click a blank area of the Taskbar, then point to Cortana. You can now choose either ‘Show Cortana icon’ to hide just the search box, or Hidden to hide both the search box and the Cortana icon itself.

Note, though, that this won’t disable Cortana. It still listens for the aforesaid activation phrase. If you want to stop that, click the Cortana icon (or say ‘Hey Cortana’), then the Settings cog. Below the Hey Cortana heading, slide the switch to the Off position (see screenshot).

Even this doesn’t fully disable Cortana, and it’ll still be gathering data behind the scenes (see News, Issue 496, page 6). While there are several other options that can be tweaked to minimise its invasiveness, killing Cortana entirely requires a Registry hack.

First, press Windows key+r, type regedit and press Enter. Next, use the left-hand pane to navigate to HKEY_ LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ Policies\microsoft\windows\windows Search. If you don’t see a Windows Search folder within the Windows folder then, still in the left-hand pane, right-click Windows, point to New, then click Key. Now type Windows Search and press Enter. Next, right-click Windows Search, point to New, then click ‘DWORD (32-bit) Value’. Type Allowcortana as the name for this new value, then right-click Allowcortana and, in the ‘Value data’ field, type 0. Restart your PC and Cortana will be history. If you ever wish to re-enable it, then repeat these instructions but, in the ‘Value data’ field, type 1.

As for your laptop touchpad problem, this occurs because you have a feature enabled that responds to a pinch-to-zoom gesture or a motion on a particular bit of the touchpad. Click Start followed by the Settings cog, then click Devices followed by ‘Mouse & touchpad’. Now, under ‘Related settings’, click ‘Additional mouse options’. Click the Device Settings tab, then select the touchpad from the list of devices and click Settings. Look for a Pinch Zoom (or similar), Region or Zone option, then unclick it and click Apply.