How to Completely Disable ‘Live Captions’ via Group Policy in Windows 11

Live Captions in Windows 11 is an accessibility feature that automatically transcribes spoken audio from any application into text displayed on the screen. While highly beneficial for users who are deaf or hard of hearing, this feature requires downloading a speech recognition language model and utilizes system resources to process audio continuously. In enterprise environments, educational institutions, or on shared workstations, system administrators may wish to disable Live Captions to conserve resources, prevent distractions, or enforce strict data processing policies.

This guide explains how to completely disable the Live Captions feature via Group Policy in Windows 11, ensuring that the feature cannot be launched via the Settings menu or the Windows Key + Ctrl + L keyboard shortcut.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding, ensure you have:

• Administrative access to the Windows 11 machine.
• Windows 11 Pro, Enterprise, or Education edition (the Group Policy Editor is not available in the Home edition).

How to Disable ‘Live Captions’ via Group Policy

Follow these steps to lock down and disable Live Captions across the operating system:

1. Press the Windows Key + R to open the Run dialog.
2. Type gpedit.msc and press Enter to open the Local Group Policy Editor.
3. In the left pane, navigate to the following path:
   User Configuration > Administrative Templates > System
4. Locate and double-click the policy named Don’t run specified Windows applications.
5. Select the Enabled radio button, then click the Show… button under the Options pane.
6. In the Value column, type LiveCaptions.exe and click OK.
7. Click Apply and OK to save the changes.
8. To prevent the feature from even being downloaded or accessed via the Settings app, you can also restrict the Settings page URI. Navigate to:
   Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Control Panel > Settings Page Visibility
9. Set the policy to Enabled, and in the text box, enter: hide:easeofaccess-livecaptions.
10. Click Apply and OK.
11. Open an elevated Command Prompt and execute gpupdate /force to apply the policies immediately.

Verifying the Changes

To verify that Live Captions is disabled, press Windows Key + Ctrl + L. The application should be blocked from launching by Group Policy. Additionally, navigating to Settings > Accessibility will show that the Live Captions option is completely hidden from the user interface.