How To Disable Settings Header Banner In Windows 10

Some Windows 10 users are reporting that they are now seeing a header banner or top bar in the Settings app. The newly added Settings header displays your user account name with email address (while using a Microsoft account to sign in), Your Phone, Windows Update, Rewards, and OneDrive icons.

Clicking on these icons in the Settings header opens their respective pages. For example, clicking on the Windows Update icon takes you to the Windows Update page in the Settings app.

The new header banner for Settings is not visible on all PCs, as Microsoft seems to have started rolling out this new feature just a day ago. So, it might take a few weeks before you see the header in the Settings app.

For those who do not know, Microsoft had been testing the header banner for Settings in the Insider builds on and off for two years now. The feature is now being made available to everyone running Windows 10 version 2004 and above.

While the Settings header displays the status of Windows Update, Your Phone, OneDrive, and Bing rewards, not everyone is fond of the new feature.

If you are looking to disable or hide the Settings header banner in Windows 10, you will be glad to know that there is a workaround involving a third-party tool to disable the Settings header. This guide can also be used to disable specific icons in the header. You can disable only the Your Phone icon, for example.

IMPORTANT: Microsoft does not recommend using Mach2 or similar tools. We recommend you create a system restore point if you decide to go ahead.

Disable the Settings app header in Windows 10

Step 1: Get the Mach2 utility from GitHub. Note that separate downloads are available for both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 10.

If you are not sure about your Windows 10 installation type, please refer to our how to check if you are running the 32-bit or 64-bit Windows 10 guide.

NOTE: Windows Defender might flag this utility as a trojan. It is a false positive. Nothing to worry about.

Step 2: Extract the ZIP file to a folder to get an executable file called mach2.exe.

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Step 3: Open the Command Prompt as administrator. To do that, type CMD in the Start/taskbar search, right-click on the Command Prompt entry, and then click Run as administrator option.

Click the Yes button when you get the User Account Control prompt.

Step 4: At the Command Prompt window, execute the following command:

cd PathToMach2

Here, replace the “PathToMach2” with the path to the folder containing the mach2.exe file. For instance, if the path to the mach2.exe is E:\Users\PC\Desktop, then the command would be this: cd E:\Users\PC\Desktop.

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Step 5: Finally, execute the following commands to disable the Settings header and icons in the header:

mach2 disable 18299130 (to completely disable the header banner)

mach2 disable 19638738 (to disable only the OneDrive icon)

mach2 disable 19638787 (to disable only the Rewards icon)

Step 6: Log out and log in again to see the Settings app without the header. Or, restart your PC once.

Enable the Settings app header banner in Windows 10

Step 1: Follow the instructions mentioned above (from Step 1 to Step 5).

Step 2: Next, execute the following command to enable the Settings app header banner:

mach2 disable 18299130

If you have any issues with the Settings app, you can reset it by following our reset the Settings app in Windows 10 guide.

Happy learning!!

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