Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. How tos

How to enable or disable ChatGPT from Windows taskbar

By
Add as a preferred source on Google
A screenshot of Windows Copilot being used in the sidebar.
Microsoft

ChatGPT is built right into Windows 11, making it super easy to use and play around with, whether you want to use it as an alternative to Google search, or to teach you board games. If you don't like this feature, though, you can easily disable it with just a few clicks.

Re-enabling it is a cinch too. Here's how to do both.

Recommended Videos

Difficulty

Easy

Duration

5 minutes

What You Need

  • Windows 11 PC or laptop

How to disable ChatGPT in Windows 11

Windows 11 has ChatGPT built into its Bing search tool, making it easier than ever to access ChatGPT's conversational chats and to help with your search results. Here's how to disable it so that you can go back to the more straightforward search tool it started out as.

Step 1: Press the Windows key + I keyboard shortcut to open the Settings menu.

Step 2: Select Privacy and security from the left-hand menu.

Windows 11 settings menu.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Step 3: Select Search permissions.

Privacy and security menu.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Step 4: Under More Settings, toggle Show search highlights to Off.

Turn off ChatGPT.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

How to enable ChatGPT in Windows 11

If ChatGPT doesn't seem to be working for you, or you previously disabled it and want to enable it once more, follow these steps.

Step 1: Press the Windows key + I to open the Settings menu.

Step 2: Select Privacy and security from the left-hand menu.

Step 3: Under More Settings, toggle Show search highlights to On.

When you do want to play around with ChatGPT again, consider trying it out on OpenAI's website. You can use great ChatGPT plugins to have it do some incredible things, and there are ChatGPT Chrome extensions to further augment its abilities.

Jon Martindale
Jon Martindale
Former Evergreen writer
Jon Martindale covers how to guides, best-of lists, and explainers to help everyone understand the hottest new hardware and…
Topics
Qualcomm is set to ratchet up chip prices in September, and your next gadget upgrade could bear the brunt
The price hike could touch every Snapdragon-powered device category.
The new Qualcomm Snadragon 8 Elite Gen 5

I want you to sit with this for a second. Qualcomm, the company whose Snapdragon chips sit inside your Android phone and tablet, your Windows laptop, your Meta smart glasses, your Galaxy Watch, and your wireless earbuds, reportedly sent a letter to every major customer telling them prices are going up by double digits. 

The price hike will be in effect from September 1, 2026, a recent Bloomberg report claims. Essentially, all the companies placing their chip orders after that will pay a higher price. 

Read more
Stop fighting with your roomie over outlets and get one of these multi-port chargers before you head back to school
One plug, zero drama, all your devices charged by morning.
Satechi ChargeView

Your room has one wall outlet, and you have multiple devices that need power by morning. Phone, laptop, tablet, earbuds, they're all vying for the same socket, and the bricks you own are single-port relics that hog it for just one gadget. You could throw a power strip at the problem, but then you're staring at a tangle of multiple bricks and cables that's enough to give you the sweats. A good multi-port charger cuts all that mess, and could be the only thing standing between you and a dead phone or laptop before your morning classes.

Back-to-school season is a smart time to buy one. You're already thinking about what'll go on your desk or in your bag, so it's the natural point to replace a pile of single-port bricks with one charger that does it all. I dug through the current crop of multi-port chargers so you don't have to, and here are five worth your money.

Read more
OpenAI’s rogue AI hack was just the beginning, Hugging Face warns
OpenAI’s rogue AI has come back to bite it
OpenAI logo on Microsoft surface

Hugging Face already knows what it is like to be attacked by an autonomous AI agent. If one of its co-founders is right, plenty of other companies are going to find out soon. Thomas Wolf, co-founder and chief science officer of Hugging Face, has called the recent cyberattack carried out by OpenAI models a “wake-up call” for the technology industry.

Speaking to the BBC, Wolf warned that AI-driven intrusions could become one of the most common forms of cyberattack and said many companies have yet to realize how dramatically the threat has changed. This arrives after OpenAI disclosed that its models escaped a restricted cybersecurity evaluation environment and compromised Hugging Face while trying to obtain answers for the ExploitGym benchmark. So Wolf’s comments now give us a better idea of what the attack looked like from the other side.

Read more