Should you care about privateness, it’s best to swap off this Home windows 11 setting

Beginning with Windows 10 in 2015, Microsoft adopted a notoriously aggressive coverage in relation to the gathering of diagnostic knowledge for telemetry functions. Early on, the corporate obtained main warmth for this follow, culminating within the implementation of further user-facing choices and much-needed transparency into the combo. Even nonetheless, nevertheless, 2025-era Windows 11 loves its knowledge assortment, with no indicators of relenting anytime quickly.

Sure, telemetry is a helpful vector for figuring out traits and for tailoring the software program expertise to the person consumer, and, sure, Microsoft’s knowledge assortment is anonymized. That being mentioned, it may possibly nonetheless be seen as an intrinsic breach of privateness when the consumer cannot totally decide out of any and all knowledge assortment (or if they are not well-informed that knowledge is being collected within the first place).

Essentially, my major drawback with Microsoft’s telemetry follow stems from the truth that Home windows 11 is not a free service. Relatively, the working system is a paid providing, with activation keys costing a fairly penny. Within the web age, we’re used to buying and selling our privateness in trade free of charge providers (assume: Facebook), however, merely put, Microsoft’s flagship PC OS does not fall into this class.

In any case, there are settings obtainable out of the field to restrict Home windows 11’s diagnostic knowledge assortment to simply the required necessities, in addition to further instruments hidden beneath the floor — you simply have to know the place to search for them.

The way to disable telemetry on Home windows 11

You’ll be able to decide out of sending some (however not all) diagnostic knowledge to Microsoft out of the field

To show off the automated sending of elective diagnostic PC knowledge to Microsoft, observe these steps:

1. Launch the Settings utility.
2. Navigate to Privateness & safety > Home windows permissions > Diagnostics & suggestions.
3. Throughout the Ship elective diagnostic knowledge part, swap the toggle to the off place.

Sadly, even with this setting toggled off, a separate set of required diagnostic knowledge will continue to be sent to Microsoft for the aim of telemetry assortment. This habits cannot be opted out of, however you do have entry to a few instruments for managing your knowledge inside Privateness & safety > Home windows permissions > Diagnostics & suggestions:

• Activate the Diagnostic Information Viewer: in trade for taking over a complete of as much as 1GB of space for storing, this characteristic supplies entry to the varied telemetry particulars despatched to Microsoft.
• Delete diagnostic knowledge: a button might be pressed to clear the diagnostic knowledge collected by Microsoft for the PC in query.

Should you occur to be operating the Professional, Enterprise, or Schooling variants of Home windows 11, there are some further measures at your disposal for disabling telemetry by way of the Group Coverage Editor. To take action, observe these steps:

1. Launch Run (both by way of Win + R, right-clicking on the Begin Menu, Home windows Search, or the Home windows Instruments folder).
2. Throughout the Run window, sort within the following: gpedit.msc
3. Press the Enter key.
4. The Native Group Coverage Editor will launch on display screen. From right here, navigate to Laptop Configuration > Administrative Templates > Home windows Elements > Information Assortment and Preview Builds.
5. Find and double-click on the Enable Telemetry coverage setting after which toggle it off.

Optionally, you can too disable the Linked Consumer Experiences and Telemetry service, to cease it from operating within the background at boot. This may be carried out on all editions of Home windows 11, together with the Residence model. To take action, observe these steps:

1. Launch Run (both by way of Win + R, right-clicking on the Begin Menu, Home windows Search, or the Home windows Instruments folder).
2. Throughout the Run window, sort within the following: providers.msc
3. Press the Enter key.
4. Providers will launch on display screen. From right here, find the Linked Consumer Experiences and Telemetry service from the alphabetized record and double-click on the entry.
5. Subsequent, an applet will seem on the display screen. Below the Startup sort drop down menu, choose disabled.
6. Click on on Apply, adopted by OK.

The following time you reboot your PC, the Linked Consumer Experiences and Telemetry service will not instantly run, saving you from but extra diagnostic knowledge harvesting.