Windows – Remove “fun” facts from Spotlight lock screen in Windows 10 Home (1803)

spotlightwindows 10windows-10-v1803windows-spotlight

UPDATE: I tried all solution proposed in How to disable “link your phone” links on the lock screen? and none of them seem to work on Windows 10 Home (version 1803), so this is probably not a duplicate question.

I like Spotlight on my lock screen, it keeps things fresh :). And with the 1803 update, I get new images more frequently, which is good. But with that same update some new "fun" facts were added, which mess up the picture.

Can I remove these facts ?

In the lock screen settings for Spotlight, there is no option to remove these:

I even switched to the lock screen picture settings to deactivate the setting, but that doesn't help either:

I already searched the internet, and some say to use the Group Policy settings, but they are not available on windows 10 Home edition.

Can this be done, or do I have to live with the "fun" facts ?

Update: I installed the Group Policy Editor and enabled the suggested option:

enter image description here

But I still have the facts displayed on my lock screen, even after a reboot.

Best Answer

It appears that at some point in the last year or two, the "Get fun facts" checkbox is no longer honored when you switch back to the Windows Spotlight option.

I have two Windows 10 machines, both build 1803. Both are set to use Windows Spotlight on the lock screen, but the older one does not show the tips and advertisements while the new one does. This was driving me crazy so I decided to dig into it, and I found this question while looking for an answer.

There are some non-GPO registry settings related to "subscribed content" in Windows 10 and one of these appears to control the lock screen tips. Under the key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ContentDeliveryManager

Set the DWORD value ContentDeliveryAllowed to 1.
Set the DWORD value RotatingLockScreenEnabled to 1.
Set the DWORD value RotatingLockScreenOverlayEnabled to 0.
Set the DWORD value SubscribedContent-338387Enabled to 0.

Why this works:

ContentDeliveryAllowed must be enabled for any of the dynamic content to work and should be enabled by default unless you've turned it off with policy. RotatingLockScreenEnabled enables the dynamic background picture instead of a static one. RotatingLockScreenOverlayEnabled is the "Get fun facts" option in the Settings app and setting it to 0 disables it.

Each of the SubscribedContent values appears to control a different part of the Windows UI, such as the start menu, taskbar, notifications area, etc., and 338387 seems to be the one for showing tips on the lock screen.

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