With the boom that personal assistants such as Siri, Google Assistant and Alexa were gaining in 2015, Microsoft wanted to enter this market by including its own personal assistant in Windows 10: Cortana . Under the name of Halo AI, this assistant wanted to become the artificial intelligence of Windows, an indispensable tool for working with the computer. However, this assistant never gained the trust of users, and in the end it has become more of a nuisance than something really useful.
Cortana is installed by default in Windows 10, both in the Home edition and in the Pro edition. Moreover, it is the wizard that guides us during the installation process of the operating system, and even asks us, in a specific phase of it , if we want to use, or not, this assistant.
Cortana was initially built into the Windows 10 start menu and search engine . Fortunately, Microsoft reconsidered and backtracked, separating the assistant from the rest of the elements of the operating system. In this way, although it is still integrated into Windows, it is possible to hide it so that it does not bother us while we are working on the PC.
Hide Windows 10 personal assistant
By default, Cortana appears as a circular button to the right of the Windows 10 search bar. When we click on this button, the personal assistant will appear, where we can write the query we want to make. Even, if we prefer, we can launch it by voice.
The latest versions of Windows have turned this assistant into a much more independent program, to the point that, if we want, we can even place its window anywhere on the computer screen.
The problem is that, if we don’t use the assistant, having the Cortana button there can become annoying, and counterproductive, in addition to taking up space. Luckily, hiding it is very simple. All we have to do is right-click on the Windows taskbar and make sure to uncheck the “Show Cortana button” option.
Automatically, the wizard icon will disappear from the Windows taskbar , and it will no longer bother us.
Should I uninstall Cortana?
Although it has become quite independent, Cortana is still part of the operating system today. This means that, if we remove the wizard, we can find some function of the operating system that does not work correctly.
Therefore, if we try to uninstall the personal assistant from the list of programs and system features, we will find that we cannot do it.
To delete the assistant from the system, it is necessary to resort to somewhat more aggressive techniques. For example, there is a PowerShell instruction that will allow us to forcibly delete this personal assistant from our operating system. To do this, we just have to open a PowerShell window, with administrator permissions, and execute the following:
Get-AppxPackage -allusers Microsoft.549981C3F5F10 | Remove-AppxPackage
After pressing “Enter”, the personal assistant will be deleted from the operating system, and all traces of it will disappear. Of course, we must bear in mind that, once deleted, problems may begin to appear in the operating system. Therefore, we must be careful what we do.
