How to Disable the Windows 11 ‘Silent Installation of Third-Party Apps’ (Candy Crush, TikTok)

One of the most frustrating features of Windows 11 is its tendency to silently install third-party applications like Candy Crush, TikTok, Spotify, and Instagram in the background without your permission. These are often injected during major Windows Updates or upon creating a new user account, cluttering your Start menu and wasting valuable disk space.

While you can right-click and uninstall these apps manually, Windows will often just reinstall them during the next major feature update. If you want to permanently stop Microsoft from pushing sponsored applications (often referred to as “Consumer Features”) to your machine, you must disable the silent installation mechanism entirely using the Windows Registry.

How to Block Silent App Installations in Windows 11

You can turn off the “Consumer Experience” feature using the Registry Editor. Note: Always be careful when editing the registry.

1. Click the Start button, type regedit, right-click on the “Registry Editor” result, and select Run as administrator.
2. Using the folder tree on the left, navigate to the following path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows
3. Right-click on the “Windows” folder, select New, and click Key.
4. Name the new key CloudContent and press Enter. (If the folder already exists, just click it).
5. Click on the new CloudContent folder to highlight it.
6. In the empty white space on the right side of the window, right-click, select New, and click DWORD (32-bit) Value.
7. Name this new value DisableWindowsConsumerFeatures and press Enter.
8. Double-click DisableWindowsConsumerFeatures, change the “Value data” from 0 to 1, and click OK.

Restart your computer for the policy change to take effect. Windows 11 will no longer silently download and install sponsored games or social media applications without your explicit consent.