How to Ban Windows 10 Ads & NSFW Content from Your Desktop

Windows 10 has privacy and security advocates up in arms . A lot of the criticism is exaggerated. When it comes to ads or NSFW (not safe for work) content on the desktop, however, Windows 10 may be crossing a line.

Microsoft and third-party developers can use several avenues to push promotional material directly onto your desktop. But you are not defenseless. We show you how you can turn off bothersome prompts, remove obvious advertising, and hide irritating images.

Start Menu

The Windows 10 Start Menu offers multiple points of entry for annoying ads or content that is NSFW. Fortunately, all of it can be preemptively removed or turned off.

Live Tiles

When you’re using Live Tiles for certain apps, you’re setting yourself up for trouble. You could be exposed to anything from violent or creepy images from a news app to nude shots shared on Twitter to a naughty picture gallery created from your very own image collection.

You can either remove the offending apps from your Start Menu or turn the Live Tile feature off. Right-click the respective tile and select Unpin from Start or More > Turn live tile off.

Suggested Apps

On the left-hand side of the Start Menu, below Most used and Recently added, you may — possibly limited to the latest Insider Preview Build — spot a Suggested category with recommended apps from the Windows Store.

When you see a suggested app, right-click it and either select Don’t show this suggestion or Turn off all suggestions. You can also head to the Settings app (press Windows key + I) > Personalization > Start and turn Off the option to Occasionally show suggestions in Start.

All Apps

When you expand all your installed applications within the Start Menu by clicking the All apps option, you may notice some strange items, like Get Skype or Get Office. These are promotional apps that come pre-installed with Windows 10 and remind you to install certain apps or upgrade ones you are already using.

Annoyingly, these apps won’t go away if you have already installed or upgraded to the next version of the corresponding app.

To manually remove them, right-click the respective app, select Uninstall, then click Uninstall again when you’re being informed that This app and its related info will be uninstalled.

Action Center Notifications

The Windows Action Center sits in the bottom right of your Taskbar, in the the Notification or System Tray area. It expands when you click the speech bubble icon or when you press Windows key + A. It’s meant to collect any system messages you may have missed the first time they popped up, such as a new app being installed or a program requiring an update.

Unfortunately, Microsoft has decided to also plant promotional notifications, such as a reminder to ugprade to Office, in the Action Center. If this bothers you, you have two options: You can either uninstall the offending app via the Start Menu > All apps as described above OR go to Settings (Windows key + I) > System > Notifications & actions and under Show notifications from these apps set the respective app to Off.

Windows Store

The Windows Store is a sales platform and thus it’s neither surprising nor unethical that it’s plastered with recommendations for paid apps. A year after its release as a preview version and roughly two months after its final release, Windows 10 accounts for more than half the Windows Store downloads. Microsoft earns 30% of every sale made on its store. The total numbers — Windows 10 has been installed on 110 million devices so far — still pale in comparison to Apple (1 billion) and Android (around 1.5 billion) devices and usage of the App Store and Google Play.

Apps

What we do find annoying, however, are ads inside Microsoft’s own apps, such as Solitaire. The classic Windows apps were upgraded for Windows 7 and replaced with mobile apps in Windows 8. In celebration of Solitaire’s 25 year anniversary,Windows 10 comes pre-installed with the Microsoft Solitaire Collection (MSC). Per default, MSC comes with in-app ads.

By upgrading to the premium version for $1.49 per month or $10 per year, you can remove advertisements and unlock additional features.

This issue is not unique to Windows 10. Ads were previously found in native Windows 8 apps and they could be removed.

Cortana

While Cortana does include Bing searches and often opens the search engine in your browser to display results, which may expose you to Bing advertisements, Microsoft promises that…

Cortana doesn’t use the information in the Cortana Notebook to send targeted ads. Ads may accompany search results that Cortana delivers—just as they do when you do a search on Bing.com.

If you still don’t trust Microsoft’s personal digital assistant, you can play it safe and disable Cortana.

Personalized Ads

Microsoft was recently suspected to have extended its Windows 10 style diagnostics and telemetry tracking to Windows 7 and 8. The truth is that these tactics are not new and have been around for many years. And until this day users can — at least in theory — opt out of the tracking and personalized ads.

Open the Settings app (Windows key + I) and head to Privacy > General. Here you can turn Off the option to Let apps use my advertising ID for experiences across apps. This won’t remove the ads, but your personal ID will not be associated with the tracked data for personalized ads.

Still Seeing Ads?

If you are seeing weird ads not described above, for example malware redirecting your web searches, you may well have acquired malware. In that case, you’ll have to go through a whole different process of cleaning up your computer. Even if you’re not affected, you should consider this security software for Windows 10 or at least enable the default Windows Defender malware protection.

Have you noticed any other non-malware ads on Windows 10 or have you noticed Microsoft advertising in previous versions of Windows? Is this really an issue or are you OK with the practice? Share your thoughts in the comments!