X-box Game Bar mysteriously Enabled?

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I installed the June updates on 6/24/21 and this morning (6/26) when I logged on I found that the X-Box Game Bar was enabled and a half-dozen widgets were populating my desktop. Is this Microsoft trying to be “helpful” or is something more serious afoot?

 

Terry Smith

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By coincidence (I think), it popped up on my computer yesterday. I assumed I had inadvertently hit Win+G.

If it becomes annoying, you can turn it off (or change its shortcuts) at Settings, Gaming, Xbox Game Bar:

How to Turn On or Off Xbox Game Bar in Windows 10

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Lars220

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Me too on one (but not all) machines yesterday.  I thought I had hit something.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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Microsoft is making changes in the background without notice or permission.
Get used to it – Win11 is going to be even better at this.
MS stated something about changes in the background somewhere in their presentation.
Did you miss it?

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They talked about updating in the background, not enabling Xbox game bars.  This feels like a bug.  I’ll ask around.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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Disable it.  Then go through the Gear Thing and fix all the other changed Settings.  Then Services.  Then Scheduled Tasks. Then the Firewall.  Then gpedit.  What else?

Kinda surprised Pro would do this unless you’ve never scoured gpedit, the part of Pro that makes it worthwhile to use.

I’m at the same point with updates and nothing changed.  Additionally, not sure completely why, neither old nor new edge are installed.  Could be the gpedit setting blocking it still works.

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Just have appstore not update apps automatically, none of mine have displayed this so thats my guess

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anonymous wrote:

Kinda surprised Pro would do this unless you’ve never scoured gpedit, the part of Pro that makes it worthwhile to use.

Sort of ironic, though, how the extra features such as Group Policy are mainly used to curtail MS from making unwanted system changes.

On my machine though – now on 20H2 build 19042.1052 – I’ve not been affected by the Xbox game bar. Maybe it’s because I disabled in Settings when I first installed Windows. No previous quality or feature update has changed it, or in fact much else from as far as I can tell. I got the News and interests icon in the taskbar, but that’s easy enough to turn off.

 

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