Remove "fun" facts from Spotlight lock screen in Windows 10 Home (1803)

Question

UPDATE: I tried all solution proposed in How to disable “link your phone” links on the lock screen? and none of them seem to work on Windows 10 Home (version 1803), so this is probably not a duplicate question.

I like Spotlight on my lock screen, it keeps things fresh :). And with the 1803 update, I get new images more frequently, which is good. But with that same update some new "fun" facts were added, which mess up the picture.

Can I remove these facts ?

In the lock screen settings for Spotlight, there is no option to remove these:

I even switched to the lock screen picture settings to deactivate the setting, but that doesn't help either:

I already searched the internet, and some say to use the Group Policy settings, but they are not available on windows 10 Home edition.

Can this be done, or do I have to live with the "fun" facts ?

Update: I installed the Group Policy Editor and enabled the suggested option:

But I still have the facts displayed on my lock screen, even after a reboot.

Answer 1

It appears that at some point in the last year or two, the "Get fun facts" checkbox is no longer honored when you switch back to the Windows Spotlight option.

I have two Windows 10 machines, both build 1803. Both are set to use Windows Spotlight on the lock screen, but the older one does not show the tips and advertisements while the new one does. This was driving me crazy so I decided to dig into it, and I found this question while looking for an answer.

There are some non-GPO registry settings related to "subscribed content" in Windows 10 and one of these appears to control the lock screen tips. Under the key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ContentDeliveryManager

Set the DWORD value ContentDeliveryAllowed to 1.
Set the DWORD value RotatingLockScreenEnabled to 1.
Set the DWORD value RotatingLockScreenOverlayEnabled to 0.
Set the DWORD value SubscribedContent-338387Enabled to 0.

Why this works:

ContentDeliveryAllowed must be enabled for any of the dynamic content to work and should be enabled by default unless you've turned it off with policy. RotatingLockScreenEnabled enables the dynamic background picture instead of a static one. RotatingLockScreenOverlayEnabled is the "Get fun facts" option in the Settings app and setting it to 0 disables it.

Each of the SubscribedContent values appears to control a different part of the Windows UI, such as the start menu, taskbar, notifications area, etc., and 338387 seems to be the one for showing tips on the lock screen.

Answer 2

The only way that seems to consistently remove the ads but continue to rotate the spotlight pictures is to enable secure sign-in, which forces you to press ctrl+alt+del to get to the sign-in screen.

It is annoying to require extra keystrokes to sign-in, but it's worth it to get rid of the ads.

To enable secure sign-in, open the group policy editor via gpedit.msc, and look for:

Local Computer Policy | Computer Configuration | Windows Settings | Security Settings | Local Policies | Security Options | Interactive Login: Do not require CTRL+ALT+DEL

Set its value to Disabled. Then reboot.

Answer 3

The existing answers didn't work for me. I'm using 21H1 build 19043.1110.

I have disabled the overlay by changing the security settings of the folder that stores the metadata for the lockscreen.

%localAppData%\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.ContentDeliveryManager_cw5n1h2txyewy\LocalState\TargetedContentCache\v3\338387

Right click the folder to open the properties, the go to the security tab and click Advanced. The click Add, select principal the user "Everyone", select type Disallow, and check only the "Write" permission. Then select OK in each window.

Answer 4

I simultaneously open Windows Settings and the Registry Editor, so that I can see how changes in the Settings are reflected in the registry. ¹

1. Win-key + i > Personalization > Lock screen
2. Win-key + r, type regedit, press OK. Go to HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ContentDeliveryManager.
3. To begin with, I set all the DWORD values RotatingLockScreenEnabled, RotatingLockScreenOverlayEnabled, and SubscribedContent-338387Enabled to 0. ²

In the Settings, I turn ON Get fun facts, tips, and more […].
Then the registry values RotatingLockScreenOverlayEnabled
and SubscribedContent-338387Enabled both change from 0 to 1. ³

Under Background, when I change from Picture to Windows spotlight, the registry value RotatingLockScreenEnabled then also goes from 0 to 1.

As this answer hints, I don't think it's possible to have Windows Spotlight ON, while at the same time having Get fun facts OFF.

But here is a registry trick: now set RotatingLockScreenOverlayEnabled and SubscribedContent-338387Enabled back to 0. The result is almost what the asker tries to do – the lock screen shows one of the spotlight images, while not displaying any "fun facts" on the lock screen. The caveat is that the currently displayed spotlight image will never change – unless you force it to. ⁴

Have a look in the Settings. The Lock screen shows the spotlight image as Picture. There is no way you can achieve this by just clicking any of Windows spotlight / Picture / Slideshow.

About ContentDeliveryAllowed

I haven't figured out what ContentDeliveryAllowed does. At one point, it seemed that setting ContentDeliveryAllowed to 0 would automatically launch Microsoft Edge on every logon, but I don't know why that would happen. For now, I've set ContentDeliveryAllowed to 1.

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¹ I am on Windows 10 Professional, 22H2.

² If the DWORD value SubscribedContent-338387Enabled doesn't exist, create it. Right-click ContentDeliveryManager > New > DWORD (32-bit) Value, paste SubscribedContent-338387Enabled. Set its value to 0. SubscribedContent-338388Enabled and SubscribedContent-338389Enabled do not seem to affect anything on the lock screen.

³ Press F5 in the Registry Editor to see the changes.

⁴ To force a new image, in Settings > Personalization > Lock screen, change Background from Picture to Windows spotlight. Put the computer to sleep (Win-key + x > u > s) or hibernate (Win-key + x > u > h).
On the lock screen, hover the camera icon, and click Not a fan. The spotlight image will be switched.