How to Disable Action Center in Windows 10

Action center is a special feature in Windows 10 from where you can access some settings, turn on or off some features and can also view some notifications. This action center can be accessed by clicking on its small icon in the notification area of the Windows taskbar or through its hotkey Win+A.

While the action center makes it very convenient to access some of the very frequently used settings in Windows 10, some Windows users do not use action center so much. For them it just sits there and takes up space in the Windows taskbar.

If you want to disable action center in Windows 10, then there are two methods:

Method 1:

  1. Press the hotkey Win+I to open Windows settings. Then select Personalization and then Taskbar.
  2. Under the category Notification area, click on Turn off system icons on or off.
  3. From the window that opens up, turn off the icon for Action Center.Turn off Action Center in Windows 10
  4. Now the action center icon will disappear from the notification area but it can still be accessed through the hotkey Win+A.

Method 2:

  1. Press hotkey Win+R to open the Run dialog. Type regedit in the Run dialog and press Enter.
  2. In the Registry Editor, navigate to the following key: 
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer
  3. If this key does not exist then you have to create it. After this, you can select this key, right-click on the right-side pane and select to create a new DWORD 32-bit value. Give the new value a name DisableNotificationCenter and assign it a value of 1.Turn off Action Center in Windows 10
  4. Now you can restart Windows for the changes to take effect. After Windows starts, you won’t see the action center icon in the Windows taskbar and the hotkey to access the action center (Win+A) will also be disabled.

The first method just hides the icon from the Windows taskbar while the second method is much more thorough and also disables the hotkey.

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