How to boost your privacy and remove unwanted features from Windows 10

Windows 10 comes with lots of features that you might not need, or want. These include Cortana, Bing in Windows Search, and the Game Bar. In addition, Microsoft’s operating system spies on you in a number of ways.

Thankfully, disabling unwanted features and locking down your privacy just got way easier.

Spydish, from the developer behind Debotnet and SharpApp, runs a check against the most important Windows privacy policies, and lets you to apply or revert any of them.

These include disabling telemetry, Wi-Fi Sense, location tracking, timeline history, and more.

You can simply accept the recommended options, or check other choices in the sidebar to disable additional features.

While there are other similar tools, many of which offer more advanced functionality, Spydish is designed to make life as simple as possible. It doesn’t require installation, you just run it with administrative privileges, click the Analyze button and then decide what action to take. Applying policies enables them, while reverting policies changes them to the default state, which is usually 'not configured'.

Spydish was intended as a private project, but the developer has chosen to release this beta version to all and is seeking feedback on it via the website.

You can download the software direct from GitHub.

Photo Credit: Alberto Garcia Guillen/Shutterstock