Out of the box, Windows 11 and 10 give you a way to record and share your games, as well as chat with your Xbox friends, manage system resources, and do all kinds of things thanks to plug-ins. All of this is available through the Xbox Game Bar, but what if you don’t care about any of these features and they’re just using up resources on your laptop? Thankfully, you can disable the Xbox Game Bar so it doesn’t bother you. Here’s how.
How to disable the Xbox Game Bar in Windows 11
You can’t fully disable the Xbox Game Bar in Windows 11, but you can make it so it doesn’t use resources in the background.
- Open the Settings app.
- Choose Apps from the sidebar.
- Click Installed apps.
- Find the Xbox Game Bar.
- Click the ellipsis button on the right and choose Advanced options.
- Under Background apps permissions, click the dropdown menu and choose Never.
- Scroll down to Terminate and click the button to stop the app.
- Choose Gaming from the Settings sidebar.
- Click Xbox Game Bar.
- Turn off the toggle labeled Open Xbox Game Bar using this button on a controller.
This will stop the Xbox Game Bar from running in the background and it will also prevent you from accidentally opening the app using a controller. However, you’ll still be able to launch the Xbox Game Bar using the Windows + G keyboard shortcut.
How to disable the Xbox Game Bar in Windows 10
In Windows 10, it’s a lot easier to simply disable the Xbox Game Bar altogether.
- Open the Settings app.
- Choose the Gaming section.
- Turn off the toggle that starts with Enable Xbox Game Bar.
How to uninstall the Xbox Game Bar completely
If you want the Xbox Game Bar to be completely gone from your computer, you can uninstall it using Windows Terminal and PowerShell.
- Open Windows Terminal (you can find it in the Start menu).
- Enter the following command and press Enter.
Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.XboxGamingOverlay | Remove-AppxPackage
- The process should only take a few seconds. Verify that the Xbox Game Bar no longer shows up in your app list, then close Windows PowerShell.
This is the only way to completely uninstall the Xbox Game Bar in Windows 11 and 10, but you may not need it in Windows 10 since it’s much easier to disable completely.
How to re-enable the Xbox Game Bar
If you regret disabling the Xbox Game Bar, you can easily turn it back on by heading back to the pages mentioned above and changing the options back to their default setting.
If you completely uninstalled the Xbox Game Bar, you can always reinstall it from the Microsoft Store. You can get it using the button below.