How to stop Cortana on Windows 10's Anniversary Update.

Microsoft's Windows 10 Anniversary Update
is coming, bringing with it a slew of new
features.

One of them you might not actually
want - the inability to switch off its Cortana
personal assistant.

With the updated operating system, the plain
old search box is being replaced with
Cortana whether you like it or not.
As Microsoft told PC World, which noted this
development: "
With the Windows 10
Anniversary Update, the search box is now
Cortana. Customers can expect the same
great search experience powered by Bing
and Microsoft Edge with the added benefit
of Cortana's personality."

Of course, not everyone wants to engage
with Cortana's personality, no matter how
magnetic and helpful it might be, and hence
the outcry on the net has begun. Particularly
because updates are now mandatory with
Windows 10 (at least for home users,
anyway).

Folks that feel Cortana is effectively being
forced on them obviously aren't happy, and
that includes those who simply don't want a
digital assistant muscling in on their desktop,
or those concerned about privacy issues and
the sort of data Cortana may be hoovering
up from their searches (compounding
Windows 10's existing privacy woes).

How to keep Cortana quiet
However, for the anti-Cortana camp, the
better news is that while her off switch may
have been binned, you can still hide the
assistant.

As Redmond told PC World, you can "easily
hide Cortana and the search box in the
taskbar altogether".

To achieve this, you need to do the
following:

1.Right click on the Cortana search box

2.Select the 'Hidden' option

3.Also, you don't have to sign-in to Cortana,
and if you stay signed out, none of the data
piped back to Redmond's servers will be
linked with your account – it will be
anonymous. Of course, you'll miss out on
certain Cortana features if you aren't signed
in.
So essentially, there are still choices here –
but just no big off switch any more.
However, that's more than enough to raise
the hackles of many users, and cause them
to wonder about the future, and what other
options may be removed as Cortana
becomes more integral to Windows 10 –
which is undoubtedly the way Redmond is
heading.