Windows 11 comes with a lot of
settings that are on by default. Most make sense, but there are some annoying ones and some that you probably don't need at all. In this video, I'm going to show you which settings you
should probably change right away. These are going to be things that will have
an impact on your privacy and improve the overall experience with Windows 11. Let's go. If you're like me and you don't like
these crowded areas in the Start menu and the jump list, there is an easy way
to get rid of this clutter. Right-click on the Windows
button and go to Settings. Select Personalization and
click on Start. In here, turn off these two options to keep
these dialog boxes neat and clean. The other thing you can do in here is
to add some shortcuts to the Start menu. Right now, when I click on Start, I have a lot of empty real estate between
my profile pic and the power button. You can change that by
clicking on Folders. Now, you can turn on some
shortcuts that you want to have. I'm going to go with pictures and videos,
and now, when I click on Windows, I see these buttons and I can jump
directly to any of these places. The next thing you want to do in Windows
11 is to disable these annoying notifications. To do that, right-click on the Windows button and
select Settings. On the system tab, select Notifications. Scroll
down to the bottom and disable "Get tips and suggestions when I use Windows." The other thing you want to turn off right
away are the ads that now seem to be everywhere. Promoted apps in the Start
menu suggest that content and the setting page, and even in the search results.
To get rid of all these, select Privacy and Security. Here, under
Windows Permissions, select General and turn off all
these options. While we're in the topic of privacy, to keep more
of your information to yourself, you can change a variety of settings. You can find most of them in the
settings under Privacy and Security. Let's start with Speech. Turn
off Online Speech Recognition. You can still use voice typing
and dictation though. Next, we'll go to Inking and Typing
Personalization. When it's turned on, Windows collect unique words like
names in a personal dictionary. This may help you type an ink more
accurately, but I'm not a fan of that, so I'm gong to turn it off. Next
is Diagnostics and Feedback. Turn off Optional Diagnostic
Data. Unless, like me, you're in the Windows Insider program. You can also turn off all the other
settings down here. If you want, go ahead and clear all diagnostic data
that was already collected with this button. So, that's it for this area. Finally, I'm quickly going to go to the Activity
History and turn off the local activity storage. No need to save that. Next up in Privacy and Security is App Permissions. An app on your computer may require
specific access to function properly, like to your physical location, to your
camera, microphone, and other devices. Now, that may make sense for some apps, but definitely not for all. So, let's change that. Similar to Windows 10, you can manage app
permissions by category. It's a long list and I'm not going to
go through the entire thing here. But, I recommend that you go through
these on your own and decide for yourself which access you want to give to which app. Many of these settings can be disabled
altogether or disabled only for specific apps. So for example, location here. You can turn off location services
completely or you leave it on and choose which apps
can access your location. I usually have most of these off
except for maybe the weather app. It's pretty cold here in Austria, so this way, I know how many
layers I need to put on. There's a lot of apps out there that
you don't want on your computer. So, to be on the safe side, you may want to limit where you
install your apps from. To do that, open Settings, select Apps and click on
Advanced App Settings. Up here, click on the dropdown to choose
where you want to get your apps from. The default is anywhere, which I don't recommend. Either go with the Microsoft store
or one of the other two options. I'm going to go with the Microsoft
store for now. This way, when you try to install a non-verified third
party app, you're going to get this message. Startup programs load automatically
when the system is turned on, but every program that's on the list
slows down your boot time and it consumes your computer resources. So this
should be your VIP list of apps. To change that, go to Settings, select Apps, and then Startup. Next, let's sort by status, so you can see
which ones are currently enabled. Okay, so, "On" means these apps load during startup, and it also indicates how much resources an app is going to consume. You especially want to check out the ones with high impact. So, just go through the list and if you
find a program that you don't need at startup, just toggle it off. I know a lot of people complain that
Microsoft is pushing hard to use a Microsoft account instead of
the good old local accounts. Now, I use multiple devices and I
actually enjoy the advantages of automatically syncing my data and
my settings between these devices. But of course, this way, Microsoft
has greater visibility into what I'm doing, what I'm searching for,
and how I'm using my computer. So, if you want more privacy and you prefer
to keep your data and settings local, then switching to a local
account, maybe an option for you. Here's how you can do that. Open
Settings and select Accounts. Click on your info. Here, in Account Settings, you can see that I'm using my Microsoft
account. And over here, you can sign in with a local account instead. Click it
and follow the steps in the window that pops up. And no worries, you're not
going to lose any local data by switching. Okay, so that's it for today.
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