Group Policy to Turn Off Copilot

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We are not ready for supporting Copilot on our 400+ Windows machines.  But now that some have starting getting it, even with our best efforts to prevent it, we now need to find a way to disable it and keep our users from using it.  I went back to Susan Bradley’s article from 2023-10-05, “MS-DEFCON 1: Pushing off Copilot”, where she mentioned, in the closing paragraph, how to block use of the app.  However, as simple as it is, this is through Local Group Policy, applied directly on a machine.  I cannot go door-to-door setting this up on each machine, so I looked for a domain-based group policy I could setup and have pushed to all Windows computers, but it doesn’t seem to exist.  I tried to follow the same path “User Configuration | Administrative Templates…”, but it doesn’t go any further. Has anyone found it?  Is there any other way to disable Copilot, regardless of when it gets foisted onto the machines by MS?  Thanks!

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You may need updated Group Policy templates for your server if the setting is missing.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=105667

Otherwise, you can push out the registry value directly:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsCopilot
Name: TurnOffWindowsCopilot
Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 1

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Thanks, steevibops!

You are right on.  I was missing the last page of Susan’s article on this topic, where she posted the ADMX/ADML files.  These fixed it up, and got the Disable Copilot out to all my users.

 

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steeviebops

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