Whenever you enable Windows 10’s voice assistant Cortana, it is always in the listening mode and it listens to whatever you say either intentionally or unintentionally. Sometimes, it even picks up those conversations that are not even intended for your computer system and hence it messes up the things. Moreover, it also keeps a track of all your activities that you perform while it is enabled. This can lead to certain privacy issues as another user can trace your activities using Cortana’s history. In this article, we will explain to you the method through which you can disable Cortana’s ever-present listening and clear its existing data in Windows 10.
Disabling Cortana’s Ever-Present Listening and Clearing its Existing Data in Windows 10
In order to disable Cortana’s ever-present listening and clearing its existing data in Windows 10, you will need to perform the following steps:
Type settings in the search section of your taskbar and click on the search results in order to launch the settings window. The newly opened Settings window is shown in the following image:
Click on the Privacy tab as highlighted in the image shown above.
Under the Privacy Settings window, click on the Speech, inking and typing tab as highlighted in the image shown below:
Now click on the button labeled as “Turn off speech services and typing suggestions” as highlighted in the following image:
In order to clear Cortana’s existing data, click on the search bar located on your taskbar in order to launch a menu as shown in the image below:
Now click on the Settings icon from this menu as highlighted in the image shown above.
In the Talk to Cortana Settings window, click on the Permissions and History tab as highlighted in the following image:
Finally, click on the Clear my Device History button in order to clear Cortana’s existing data as highlighted in the image shown below:
Conclusion
In this way, you can easily disable Cortana’s ever-present listening and clear its existing data in Windows 10 using the method described in this article. This is how you can prevent Cortana from keeping a track of whatever you do while using Windows 10.
