Use This App to Block Ads on Windows 11

Advertisements—sometimes prompts to do something that would financially benefit Microsoft and sometimes actual paid advertisements—are showing up all over Windows 11. Start menu ads are rolling out to all users this month, taking the shape of "Recommended" applications you haven't installed. Ads also briefly showed up in File Explorer, though this was apparently unintentional. And there have long been calls to action on the lock screen and in the settings app. It's a mess.

We've told you how to manually turn off all of Microsoft's ads in Windows 11, but it's a lot of digging around in the settings. If you'd rather not do that, an app called OFGB can do it for you. This free and open source application can quickly change various registry settings to disable those ads—all you have to do is click a few checkboxes.

To get started, simply download the latest release from Github. There are two versions—one tiny one that will only work if you've already installed .NET 8.0 and another massive one that has .NET bundled. Use whichever sounds easier to you.

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Open the application and you'll see a bunch of checkboxes allowing you to disable different features. This includes the infamous ads in the File Explorer, the ads on the lock screen, the "Suggested content" in the Settings app, the general tips and tricks that pop up while you're using Windows, the Windows "Welcome Experience," the optional tracking tool that enables "more personal" ads, the "Tailored Experience" feature that tracks your website browsing to show product recommendations, and the "recommended" ads that show up in the start menu.

It's honestly a lot of stuff to have to disable just to get a clean operating system, but with this application, at least it's all in one place. And hey: It's easier than wiping your computer just to install an actually clean version of Windows 11, so that's a plus.