Cortana, the intelligent personal assistant built into Windows 10, is meant to provide users with useful suggestions and enable them to perform searches (through voice commands). But if you'd like to permanently disable Cortana on your system, this guide will teach you how to do so.

Disable Cortana in Windows 10

Disabling Cortana is a two-step procedure.

Turn Off Cortana Suggestions and Search

The first step is to remove Cortana from the Windows taskbar. Click inside the Search box to open Cortana and then click on the Menu button > Notebook > Settings:

Toggle the Cortana can give you suggestions, ideas, reminders, alerts and more switch Off:

Moving forward, Cortana will no longer show up when your click inside the Search bar.

Prevent Cortana from Running in the Background

At this point in time, Cortana is still active on your system, running in the background and collecting information about your computer usage. To prevent this from happening, you'll need to turn off the Getting to know you option in Windows 10 settings:

For more information, please read our article Prevent Windows 10 from Getting to Know You.