How to disable Bing and Edge recommendations (2024)

Today, we will review a simple method to disable recommendations in Microsoft Edge. From time to time it shows them as desktop popups to promote this or that feature. For example, it may show you a Copilot ad, promote Bing AI search, or offer to set Edge as your default browser.

Edge, the default browser in Windows 11 and 10, is based on the Chromium project. It is the same project that Google Chrome built on. But unlike Chrome, Edge is not tied to Google's services. It is backed by Microsoft's search and is integrated with its solutions.

It offers unique and exclusive features that users often not happy to see. One of them are recommendations that appear on the desktop as a pop-up. Such pop-up may ask you to set Edge as your default browser, or change search engine in Google Chrome to Bing. A similar message may appear on the Edge home page asking you to link Edge to a smart phone.

When these recommendations appear they do not include an option to hide them completely. You can only hide that particular message for a week, then it reappears.

Sadly, the Microsoft Edge browser doesn't not include an option anywhere in the user interface to disable these ads. But there is a group policy that disables all kind of feature advertisem*nts.

Disable Recommendations in Microsoft Edge

To stop Edge from showing recommendation ads, do the following.

1. Close the Microsoft Edge browser.
2. Open the Registry editor (Win + R > regedit).
3. Navigate to the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge.
4. If the Edge key is missing, right-click the Microsoft key in the left pane and select New > Key, and name it Edge.
5. Now right-click the (newly created) Edge folder on the left, and select New > DWORD (32-bit) value.
6. Name the new value ShowRecommendationsEnabled, and leave its value data as 0 (zero).
7. Now, similarly create a new value SpotlightExperiencesAndRecommendationsEnabled. Also leave its data as 0.
8. Finally, create one more DWORD value PromotionalTabsEnabled, and keep it as 0 too.
9. Close the Registry editor, press Win + X on the keyboard and select Terminal.
10. In Terminal, type gpupdate /force /target:user and hit Enter.

Congrats, you will no longer see ads and recommendations in Edge.

The only downside of this method is that you will see a tiny note in the Edge menu and its settings claiming that it is now managed 'by your organization'. You can safely ignore this note, as it always appears when one or more group policies are applied to the browser.

Undo the change

To undo the change, remove the three values you have created, ShowRecommendationsEnabled, SpotlightExperiencesAndRecommendationsEnabled, and PromotionalTabsEnabled, from the Registry.

To save your time, you can use one of the following methods, including special console commands and REG files to apply the change with one click.

Disable Bing pop-ups in Edge from Command Prompt

1. Right-click the Start menu button in the taskbar, and select Terminal (Admin) from the menu.
2. Type these commands, one-by-one.
   1. reg add "HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Edge" /v "PromotionalTabsEnabled" /t REG_DWORD /d "0" /f
   2. reg add "HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Edge" /v "ShowRecommendationsEnabled" /t REG_DWORD /d "0" /f
   3. reg add "HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Edge" /v "SpotlightExperiencesAndRecommendationsEnabled" /t REG_DWORD /d "0" /f
   4. gpupdate /force /target:user
3. Hit Enter after each of the commands, and you are done.

Finally, I have placed all these commands into the batch file you can download from here.

To undo the changes, run these command. They are also included in the above linked file as an undo solution.

• reg delete "HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Edge" /v "PromotionalTabsEnabled" /f
• reg delete "HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Edge" /v "ShowRecommendationsEnabled" /f
• reg delete "HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Edge" /v "SpotlightExperiencesAndRecommendationsEnabled" /f
• gpupdate /force /target:user

Disable desktop pop-ups from Microsoft Edge with REG files

I have created two REG files that contain all the necessary modifications in the Registry.

⬇️ Download REG files from here⬇️

Extract the ZIP archive to any folder of your choice and click on the file "Disable recommendations in Edge.reg". Then confirm the User Account Control dialog (click Yes), and confirm the REG file addition to the Registry (click Yes again).

Now you have the ad pop-ups disabled in the Edge browser.

The ZIP file you have downloaded includes an undo tweak to revert the policy values to their defaults.

That's it.