In the event you care about privateness, you need to swap off this Home windows 11 setting

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

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

Essentially, my principal downside with Microsoft’s telemetry observe stems from the truth that Home windows 11 is not a free service. Fairly, the working system is a paid providing, with activation keys costing a reasonably penny. Within the web age, we’re used to buying and selling our privateness in change 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 out there out of the field to restrict Home windows 11’s diagnostic information assortment to simply the required necessities, in addition to extra instruments hidden beneath the floor — you simply have to know the place to search for them.

Find out how to disable telemetry on Home windows 11

You possibly can decide out of sending some (however not all) diagnostic information to Microsoft out of the field

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

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

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

• Activate the Diagnostic Knowledge Viewer: in change for taking on a complete of as much as 1GB of space for storing, this function offers entry to the assorted telemetry particulars despatched to Microsoft.
• Delete diagnostic information: a button will be pressed to clear the diagnostic information collected by Microsoft for the PC in query.

In the event you occur to be working the Professional, Enterprise, or Training variants of Home windows 11, there are some extra measures at your disposal for disabling telemetry through the Group Coverage Editor. To take action, observe these steps:

1. Launch Run (both through Win + R, right-clicking on the Begin Menu, Home windows Search, or the Home windows Instruments folder).
2. Inside the Run window, kind 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 Pc Configuration > Administrative Templates > Home windows Elements > Knowledge Assortment and Preview Builds.
5. Find and double-click on the Enable Telemetry coverage setting after which toggle it off.

Optionally, it’s also possible to disable the Related Consumer Experiences and Telemetry service, to cease it from working within the background at boot. This may be accomplished on all editions of Home windows 11, together with the Residence model. To take action, observe these steps:

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

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