You Can Finally Uninstall Microsoft's Copilot App, But It's Tricky

You Can Finally Uninstall Microsoft’s Copilot App, But It’s Tricky

Last updated: 2026/01/16 at 10:59 PM

News Room Published 16 January 2026

Copilot is one of Microsoft’s big bets for the future of the company, so it’s not going to encourage you to get rid of it. However, there is a new way to say farewell to the AI, but only if you’re using a managed device and you have your admin’s cooperation.

Ever since the tech giant started automatically installing Copilot across Windows 10 and 11 PCs in 2023, Microsoft has allowed users to disable Copilot temporarily. But it’s been impossible to uninstall it completely.

Now, with the release of a Windows 11 Insider Preview build on Microsoft’s Developer and Beta Channels, IT administrators can uninstall the AI-powered Copilot digital assistant on managed devices on Enterprise, Pro, and EDU SKUs.

How to Remove Copilot for Good

The policy, called RemoveMicrosoftCopilotApp, has quite a few caveats. The user must have both Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Copilot installed on the system, and the Microsoft Copilot app must not have been installed by the user.

Another requirement is that the Microsoft Copilot app hasn’t been launched in the past 28 days. As Tom’s Hardware notes, this is actually pretty tough to meet for average users, as Microsoft’s AI assistant has “auto-start on login” turned on by default. This means the user would have had to disable the app in Task Manager’s list of Startup Apps, and somehow avoid accidentally launching the app for the best part of a month.

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If you’re in charge of a managed PC and you’d like to remove Copilot, head to the Group Policy Editor, followed by User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows AI > Remove Microsoft Copilot App.

Some Windows users have obviously been looking forward to this for a while. In March 2025, a rogue update actually removed Microsoft’s Copilot assistant from the OS for some users due to a software bug. Ironically, some users liked the unintended consequence, with one saying “finally a good feature” in a Reddit post.