You often hear about how Windows 11 has become an annoying operating system, whether it's because it's riddled with ads, AI features, or just "bloated" in general. Even if it's sometimes hard to point to one specific thing, it's the sum of a bunch of little things that gives Windows 11 a feeling of being slower and and less efficient than it should be.

Thankfully, there are ways you can try and make it better, and a lot of the more annoying features and services in Windows 11 an be disabled to improve your experience. If you're looking to free up some resources on your system, here are a few things you can try.

Windows Telemetry

Barely even a feature

One of core things people tend to dislike about Windows 11 is Microsoft's telemetry data collection. This allows Microsoft to learn information about your configuration and usage so that data can be used to help Microsoft fix issues with Windows in the future.

Considering the state of Windows 11 reliability in recent years, you might say that data hasn't been all that helpful, so there isn't much to be lost if you disable it. You can disable Windows telemetry in the Services dialog (you can just search for it in the Start menu's search bar), where you can find it under the name Connected User Experiences and Telemetry. Disabling this service should have next to no downsides for you and it could improve performance in some situations.

Search indexing

There are better options

Searching your files on Windows is a painful experience a lot of the time. Not every directory is indexed, so some files may never show up, but even with the reduced scope of results, Windows Search can be painfully slow to bring you results. It's especially bad when you're using the search bar in the Start menu, as it causes results to be jumpy and you might end up opening something you didn't intend to.

Thankfully, this too can be disabled using the Services control panel. You can find it under the name Windows Search, and disabling it means your Start menu won't search for files anymore.

And if you're wrorried this will make it harder to find your files, there's no need to fret. The best way to find files on your system is using the Everything app by Voidtools. This features its own search enigne which indexes files immensely faster than Windows, and returns search results instantly for any and all terms you may want to search for. It even supports wildcards, so there's truly no reason to keep the built-in Windows Search service.

Bing search

Web results aren't that useful, either

Another feature of the search bar in the Windows 11 taskbar and Start menu is the ability to search the web, which, on paper, may seem useful. But it becomes a lot less interesting when you realize it uses Bing to search, and usually search results forcibly open in Microsoft Edge regardless of your default browser (we'll come back to that in a second).

Plus, much like file searches, having Bing built into the search bar can make searches feel jumpy, so turning it off effectively turns the Windows search bar into an excellent tool for just launching your apps or finding settings. You can disable Bing searches easily using the Settings app, under Privacy & Security > Search. You're better off using your browser for web searches, or potentially using a launcher like Flow Launcher with a web search plugin.

Microsoft Edge

Only for EEA users... but not really

Much like Bing with searches, Microsoft Edge tends to be the laughing stock of the browser world, and the fact that it's not only installed by default but impossible to remove makes it a frustrating experience. Well, that was until the European Commission forced Microsoft to allow users in the European Economic Area to remove Edge.

Microsoft complied only for the EEA, but that doesn't mean you have to be out of luck entirely. There are ways to trick Windows 11 into thinking your computer is from the EEA and allow you to remove Microsoft Edge, and once you have your own browser of choice, I recommend doing it. You'll never have to accidentally open it again or have its services run in the background, which can only be a good thing.

Widgets

You can hide them

Widgets are a Windows 11 feature that I was sort of hopeful for, but that interest was kind of dashed by the fact that out of the box, all the widgets provided are just for web services and they feel kind of slow and out of place. Support for app-powered widgets was added far too late for anything interesting to be done with it, so I generally just remove the Widgets button from my taskbar.

This doesn't remove the feature entirely, but the Widgets button already shows the weather, and that information isn't loaded unless the icon is visible, so this already lowers resource usage a bit. Unfortunately, there isn't a way to completely remove this feature, but this is an improvement.

OneDrive

At the very least, disable automatic backups

Whether you use OneDrive or not, one of the most frustrating parts of Windows 11 is that, once you sign in with a Microsoft account, your computer automatically starts backing up your Desktop, Documents, and Pictures folders to the cloud, and it also syncs backups from your other computers to that machine. That may sound fine, but OneDrive only has 5GB of free storage, not to mention syncing your desktop icons typically just results in a bunch of icons that don't work, because the corresponding apps aren't installed.

If you don't use OneDrive, your best bet is uninstalling the app altogether so it's never running in the background. But if do appreciate some of its features, you may at least want to disable the automatic folder backup. It will reduce your internet and resource usage, as well as save storage space in OneDrive if you need it for other files.

Copilot

And all the AI junk

Since 2023, Microsoft has been spreading its Copilot assistant to every surface it can. After debuting on the web, Copilot and AI features are everywhere in Windows, including the taskbar, Notepad, Paint, and more. I have no love for the AI features in Windows 11, and I certainly don't enjoy seeing the Copilot icon appearing everywhere, so that's one of the first things I always remove.

Uninstalling the Copilot app alone is relatively easy, but if you want every AI feature possible removed from Windows, I do recommend checking out a PowerShell script called RemoveWindowsAI. I tested this out a while back and it did a thorough job making Windows 11 feel like a cleaner experience, so I can only recommend checking it out.

A more peaceful experience

These are just a few things you can do to make Windows 11 a more peaceful place to work in. As someone who's seen what things are like on other platforms like macOS and Linux, some of the intrusions of Microsoft's OS make no sense and disabling them really helps create a better experience. If you're frustrated with Windows 11 as well, try the steps above; they may just improve your outlook.