Turn off Action Center in Windows 10 Home or Pro
Update: 1/8/2016: I just found out that now you can indeed turn Action Center off easily in Settings. Go to Settings > System > Notifications & actions and click Turn system icons on or off.
Then at the bottom of the list, you can flip Action Center off or back on again. And, this option is available in both Home and Pro versions of Windows 10.
The instructions below still work, too, but you probably don’t want to go through all the hassle since this just required flipping a switch. Thanks to our reader Alan for the tip!
Disable Action Center in Windows 10 Pro
In Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise, disabling Action Center can be done through Group Policy Editor. Hit Windows Key+R and type: gpedit.msc and hit Enter.
Then under Local Computer Policy, go to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar. Then in the right pane, scroll down, and double-click Remove Notifications and Action Center.
Next, select Enabled, click OK, and then sign out and back in again or restart your PC.
After you sign back in, you’ll see that the Action Center icon is no longer in the system tray.
Disable Action Center Windows 10 Home
Group Policy Editor is only available in Pro or Enterprise versions. So, to turn it off, not using the option in Settings, you’ll need to tweak the Registry.
Now navigate to the following path:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer
If you don’t see it, you’ll need to create the key and name it Explorer. To do that, right-click on the Windows key and select New > Key.
After you’ve created the Explorer key, right-click in the right pane and create a new DWORD (32-bit) value and name it: DisableNotificationCenter, and give it a value of 1.
Close out of the Registry and restart your PC, and when you log back in, the Action Center icon will be gone. If you want to bring it back, go back and change the value data to zero. If you’re a fan of Action Center and a new Windows 10 user, read our guide: How to Configure and Use Action Center. What’s your take? Do you use Action Center? Leave a comment below and let us know. Its there in both Home and Pro versions. Thanks for the info! I find the Action Center on my traditional desktop not useful but definitely is useful on tablets and laptops and convertibles with touchscreens. “If this setting is enabled, Notifications and Action Center is not displayed in the notification area. The user will be able to read notifications when they appear, but they won’t be able to review any notifications they miss.” This doesn’t do anything useful. I want to stop the notifications from appearing completely. Items which would raise a notification are already monitored and maintained by our IT department. End users can’t do anything about any of the notifications they receive. So what’s the point? Comment
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