Background apps can keep on munching the bandwidth of your data and the battery life of your Windows 10 device. This is due to the fact that they keep on refreshing in the background for notifications and auto-updates. You might not want to turn them off under normal circumstances, but if you’re out and about and wish to conserve power or simply want to redirect your processing power to some good use other than updating apps then here are four ways to turn off background apps in Windows 10.

Disable Windows 10 background apps using Settings:

Open the Start menu and type settings in the search bar. Click on the Settings app to proceed.

In the Settings menu, click on the Privacy tab with the padlock icon.

Scroll down to the Background apps menu in the Privacy tab and click on it to reveal the settings.

You can either toggle all the background apps off with the main switchon the top or you can individually disable the apps that consume more power and data.

Turning off all the apps would conserve a significant amount of power and bandwidth.

Using Registry Editor:

Open the Start menu and type run in the search bar. Click on the Run app to proceed.

Type regedit in the Run command bar and press OK to continue.

Windows will prompt you to allow the permission to open the Registry Editor. In the Registry Editor, type the command below in the highlighted space and press Enter.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\BackgroundAccessApplications

Right-click on the BackgroundAccessApplications menu and select New. Click on DWORD (32-bit) Value to create a new entry.

The new entry would prompt you to rename it. Type in GlobalUserDisabled and click anywhere to save it.

Right-click on the newly created entry and select Modify.

Change the Value data: from 0 to 1 and click on OK to save the changes.

0 = Background Apps Enabled

1 = Background Apps Disabled

Disable Windows 10 background apps using Command Prompt:

Open the Start menu and type cmd in the search bar. Right-click on the Command Prompt app and select Run as administrator.

Type the command below in the Command Prompt and press Enter to save the changes.

Reg Add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\BackgroundAccessApplications /v GlobalUserDisabled /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

If you wish to revert the changes and enable the background apps again, follow the command below:

Reg Add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\BackgroundAccessApplications /v GlobalUserDisabled /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

Using Windows PowerShell:

Open the Start menu and type powershell in the search bar. Click on the Windows PowerShell app to proceed.

Type the command below in the Command Prompt and press Enter to save the changes.

Reg Add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\BackgroundAccessApplications /v GlobalUserDisabled /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

If you wish to revert the changes and enable the background apps again, follow the command below:

Reg Add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\BackgroundAccessApplications /v GlobalUserDisabled /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

With these steps, you can disable or enable the background apps in Windows 10 at your discretion. You can either do it individually via Settings or you can turn all the apps on/off via Command Prompt, PowerShell, or Registry Editor in Windows 10.

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