Quick Tip: How to Turn Off Cortana Notifications in Windows 10

Jim Tanous Read more November 13, 2017

Microsoft really wants you to use Cortana, the built-in digital assistant in Windows 10. In fact, they want you to use Cortana so much that they pester you with notifications, even if you never touched Cortana in the first place. While it’s certainly not ideal that Microsoft does this by default in Windows 10, the good news is that you can at least turn off notifications for Cortana, whether you use the feature or not.
First, if you happen to catch one of the Cortana notifications while it’s still in your Action Center, you can quickly turn off Cortana notifications by hovering your cursor over the notification, clicking the small gear icon, and selecting Turn off notifications for Cortana.

If you don’t have a Cortana notification already waiting, you can turn them off at any time by heading to Settings > System > Notifications & Actions. Scroll down to the section labeled Get notifications from these senders and find the entry for Cortana.

You can either click the toggle switch to turn Cortana notifications off completely, or click the Cortana icon to see additional settings.

These settings allow you to limit Cortana notifications if you don’t want to disable them completely. For example, you can choose to hide the notification banners but still allow them to appear in Action Center, turn off sounds for Cortana notifications, or prioritize how they’ll appear in Action Center.
Each change you make will take effect immediately; there’s no need to log out or reboot to save your changes. Also note that turning off Cortana notifications doesn’t turn off Cortana itself. You can continue to use all of Cortana’s other voice and personal assistant features, you just won’t get any notifications from the service. This should be fine for most people but remember to turn Cortana notifications back on if you rely on her for things like reminders and package tracking.