Disable Windows Copilot | Gossamer Web Design

Disable Windows Copilot on Windows 11 (Lockdown Script)

Microsoft’s Copilot button and sidebar can appear after updates. While you can hide the taskbar button, the most reliable approach is to apply a policy-based disable and a per-user UI hide. This post provides a safe, reversible PowerShell “lockdown” kit.

What this kit does

Disables Copilot system-wide using policy registry keys (authoritative).
Hides the Copilot taskbar button for the current user.
Restarts Explorer so the taskbar change applies immediately.
Includes an undo script to revert the changes.

Files included

Copilot-Lockdown.ps1 — disables Copilot + hides the button
Copilot-Lockdown-UNDO.ps1 — reverses the changes
README.md — usage, deployment notes, and troubleshooting
Copilot-Lockdown-Kit.md — full documentation (copy/paste friendly)

How to run (recommended)

Download and extract the ZIP on the Windows 11 machine.
Right‑click PowerShell and choose Run as administrator.
Navigate to the folder containing the scripts.

Run the lockdown script:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\Copilot-Lockdown.ps1

If Copilot still shows up, reboot once (some shells apply policy changes on reboot).

How to undo

To revert the registry changes and restore the default behavior:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\Copilot-Lockdown-UNDO.ps1

Notes & safety

This kit uses registry policy keys (what Group Policy would normally set). Some Windows builds won’t show a “Windows Copilot” node in gpedit.msc; this still works.
No system files are removed. This approach is safe and reversible.
The script includes a best‑effort PolicyManager value that may be ignored on some builds; it doesn’t break anything.