Photos App running in background

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Can anyone tell me how to stop the Photos app running in the background?  Is there a registry entry? Because every time I disable it, it comes back. CCleaner warns me every time I run a clean and I have to disable it. It also uses memory and CPU power. I don’t use it, will never use it and find it a waste of resources. I’ve looked on the Microsoft support forums and they say to use Cortana to turn it off. Guess what? I use O&O Shutup to turn off Cortana. And that hack doesn’t seem to work anyway.

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Here are the registry entries I’ve used since Win 10 1909 (~12/2019):

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\BackgroundAccessApplications\Microsoft.Windows.Photos_8wekyb3d8bbwe]
“DisabledByUser”=dword:00000001
“Disabled”=dword:00000001
“IgnoreBatterySaver”=dword:00000000

I couldn’t find my original web reference where I found these. They are referenced in https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/remote/remote-desktop-services/rds-vdi-recommendations-2004 .

Best, Phil

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Tom

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The photo app can be completely removed by opening a powershell prompt and entering the following command.

Get-AppxPackage -name “Microsoft.Windows.Photos” | Remove-AppxPackage;

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Tom

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RESOLVED. I’ve used O&O App Buster to get rid of Photos. I’ve installed Irfanview for the rare occasions I want to look at an image without opening Photoshop. It doesn’t keep running when it’s closed and I just discovered it can open .psd files. So all good.

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Tom wrote:

Can anyone tell me how to stop the Photos app running in the background? Is there a registry entry? Because every time I disable it, it comes back. CCleaner warns me every time I run a clean and I have to disable it. It also uses memory and CPU power…

Hi Tom:

I know this won’t help now since you’ve already used O&O AppBuster to remove Microsoft Photos from your system, but do you recall the name of the Microsoft Photos process that was running in Task Manager? I have a Win 10 Pro v22H2 OS and Microsoft Photos in not listed as a startup app at Settings | Apps | Startup, and I can’t see any .exe files associated with this app on the Processes tab of Task Manager that are loading at boot-up and running in the background.

Settings | Apps | Apps & Features and my Reliability Monitor show that the Microsoft Store automatically updated this UWP app to v2023.11090.12017.0 on 22-Sep-2023 …

… but I would expect this UWP app to automatically update because I have Microsoft Photos enabled at Settings | Privacy | App Permissions | Background Apps.

I use CCleaner Free Portable v6.16 and I’ve never seen a warning about closing Microsoft Photos, but I only run manual Custom Clean scans to clean a relatively small number of items and never allow other features like the Health Check system optimizer or the Software Updater to run on my system.  All I can see in Custom Clean that might be associated with Microsoft Photos is a check box (disabled by default) to clean Photos Temp Files.

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Dell Inspiron 5584 * 64-bit Win 10 Pro v22H2 build 19045.3448 * Firefox v117.0.1 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.23080.2006-1.1.23080.2005 * Malwarebytes Premium 4.6.3.282-1.0.2151 * Macrium Reflect Free v8.0.7279 * Microsoft Photos v2023.11090.12017.0 * CCleaner Free Portable v6.16.10662

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