One of the main points of criticism in regards to the ever increasing number of recommendations and offers in Microsoft’s Windows 11 operating system is that they cannot be managed from a central location.
If you want to turn them all off elegantly, you either have to go through various sections, or use a third-party application like WinAero Tweaker, or O&O’s ShutUp10++, or one of the many other tools that help users do that.
Recommendations & offers in Windows 11 Settings
Microsoft is working on introducing a central location for recommendations and offers. While it is doubtful that this will cover all promotions that Microsoft throws at users nowadays, it at least merges related settings from various locations into a single group in the Settings app.
Discovered by Phantom of Earth and published on X, Recommendations & offers provides the following options at the time of writing:
- Personalized offers — Get personalized tips, ads, and recommendations based on Windows activity.
- Allow websites to access my language list.
- Improve Start and search results — By tracking which apps get opened.
- Show notifications in Settings.
- Recommendations and offers in Settings — Allow Windows to show product recommendations and offers in Settings.
- Advertising ID.
The new group is found under Settings > Privacy & Security. You do need to run the latest Beta of Windows 11 and may need to enable it by running the command .\vivetool /enable /id:49666228,48433719 from an elevated PowerShell prompt.
Closing Words
Clearly, this new group of Settings is still inferior to what tweaking apps offer. It may still expose more of these settings to users who do not use the tweakers or configure their systems using Registry tweaks or policies.
What is your take on this new group of settings? Move in the right direction? Feel free to leave a comment down below.
Based on all of my my previous experience with the windows OS, starting with 3.1, I’m going to assume the purpose of this change is misdirection.
In the same way a magician keeps your attention away from what he/she doesn’t want you to notice.
Why does Microsoft, or Google for that matter assume that everybody running a search wants to buy something? The whole world isn’t built around consumerism and people have other interests for which they’re looking for answers to.
For example, I’ve been searching the Web for an audio player for Android that has a Stop button. I’ve always used VLC for audio or video on Windows, but even that app doesn’t have a Stop button to stop playing a song or other piece of music on the Android version. In fact, in desperation I’ve taken to using the “Force stop” button in Android settings to stop an audio track from playing on every music player I’ve tried so far. That, or simply uninstalling it and then reinstalling it again.
Is this Google’s or Microsoft’s new method to try and hold somebody’s attention or something?