How to Remove Ads in Windows 11

In this guide, we will show you various methods to remove ads from your Windows 11 PC. Ads are touted as the necessary evil- on one hand, they might disrupt your normal workflow but on the flip side, they are the publisher’s sole source of income. In this regard, there’s a right balance that needs to be achieved. However, if a user has paid for a service, then there shouldn’t be any intrusive ads or pop-ups.

And that is something that all our readers would agree with. However, the OS giants don’t seem to strictly follow this notion. While they still don’t show third-party ads, but they occasionally bug us with their own service recommendations and promotions. Be it the notifications, Taskbar, or even the Start Menu, you would find the recommendation to their products in all these places.

While they aren’t aggressively sent to us nor are they intrusive in nature, but they still shouldn’t be there in the first place. The recent fiasco when the Microsoft Teams ads ended up breaking the entire OS functionality (and resulting in frequent crashes to Explorer, Taskbar, and the likes) adds one more to the list of why ads shouldn’t be served.

If a user really wants one of Microsoft products, then they are just a Google search away, why keep notifying the user every now and then regarding the same! So if you also echo these thoughts, then you have come to the right place. In this guide, we will show you numerous methods to remove ads from your Windows 11 PC. Follow along.

How to Remove Ads in Windows 11

Do keep in mind that there’s no universal fix as such. You will have to try out each of the below-mentioned methods and see what works best for you. So keeping that in mind, let’s get started.

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Method 1: Remove Windows 11 Ads via Registry Editor & CMD

In this method, we will be disabling the service that is responsible for serving first-party apps to your PC via Registry. But rather than carrying out each of the steps manually via Registry Editor, we have combined them all into a single command, which you could directly execute in the CMD window. This would end up your precious time and valuable efforts.

1. So head over to the Start Menu, search CMD, and launch it as an administrator.
   
2. Then copy-paste the below command in the CMD window and hit Enter:

   reg delete HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\IrisService /f && shutdown -r -t 0

   

3. Your PC will now restart and once it boots up, the ads would have been disabled.

That’s it. This is how you could remove ads from your Windows 11 PC using Registry Editor. Let’s now check out some of the other methods to carry out this task.

Method 2: Turn off Windows 11 App Notifications

The next approach is to turn off those pesky notifications for good. Now there are two different approaches that you could take in this regard- disable notifications from all the apps, or take granular control over these prompts and only disable them from a few apps. Instructions for both are given hereby:

1. Bring up the Settings page via Windows+I shortcut keys.
2. Then select System from the left menu bar and go to Notifications.
3. Within that, turn off the Notifications toggle to put a blanket ban on all app notifications.
   
4. However, if you wish to take a less aggressive approach, then scroll down a little bit and then disable the toggle next to the desired app of your choice.
   

So this was the second method through which you could remove ads from your Windows 11 PC. let’s now turn our focus towards a few other such methods that are capable of disabling Windows ads.

Method 3: Disable Windows 11 Tips and Suggestions

Windows also send you Tips and Suggestions at regular intervals. But rather than actually helping out the users, they tend to infuriate them. Therefore, the best way out is to disable these recommendations right away, which could be done as follows:

1. Open Settings via Windows+I shortcut key combinations.
2. Then go to System from the left menu bar and head over to the Notification section.
3. Scroll to the end of the page and uncheck “Offer suggestions on how I can set up my device”.
   
4. Likewise, also uncheck the “Get tips and suggestions when I use Windows” option.

So these were the steps to disable Tips and Suggestions, and hence remove ads from your Windows 11 PC.

Method 4: Remove Windows 11 Ads by Disabling Sync Provider

Using the Sync Provider service, Microsoft sends recommendations for its product and services, especially for its Office and OneDrive offerings. These ads usually appear in File Explorer, but the good thing is that they could easily be disabled. Here’s how:

1. Launch File Explorer via Windows+E shortcut key combinations.
2. Then click on the three horizontal dots present at the top menu bar.
3. Select Options from the drop-down menu that appears.
   
4. Now go to the View tab of the Folder Options dialog box.
5. Finally, uncheck the “Show sync provider notifications” option.
   

That’s it. These were the steps to disable Sync Provider service and in turn, remove ads from your Windows 11 PC.

Method 5: Disable Windows 11 Targeted Ads (Or Should You?)

So let’s get this straight- turning off targeted ads wouldn’t limit the number of ads that you are receiving. It will just be that you would now be getting random ads not matching your browser history. But why would anyone want to do so? Well, it’s due to privacy concerns.

The ads that you are getting displayed across various sites are directly related to your browser history and then the product that you have interacted with. As a result, these ads will give an idea of your browsing history to other users on your PC. So if you wish to stop this from happening, then consider disabling this Targeted Ads feature. Here’s how it could be done:

1. Head over to the Settings menu from the Start menu.
2. Then go to the Privacy & security section from the left menu bar.
3. After that, go to General under the Windows Permission section.
   
4. Finally, disable the toggle next to “Let apps show me personalized ads by using my advertising ID”.
   

Concluding Remarks

So these were the various methods to remove ads from your Windows 11 PC. Once you carry out the instructions mentioned in all these five methods, you are bound to get near about ad-free usage experience. Apart from that, if you are also getting a plethora of ads across various web browsers on your Windows 11 PC, then there are a few tricks that you could try out:

• Use an AdBlocker Extension
• Stay away from malicious websites that are usually known to display intrusive ads.
• Browse in an Incognito/Private Mode (this will allow you to browse anonymously, thereby preventing the sites from accessing your trackers. As a result, you will only get non-targeted ads, similar to the one in Method 5.