[Fix] Charms Bar Randomly Appears on Windows 8/8.1 Devices
Problem Description:
Most of you might be aware of the new Charms Bar feature introduced in Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 operating systems. Its a new type of toolbar which is auto-hidden by default but can be shown on screen by moving your mouse cursor to top-right corner or bottom-right corner of the screen, that’s why its also known as a Hot Corner feature. It can also be accessed using Win+C hotkey.
But most of the Windows 8/8.1 users don’t like this feature. They find it annoying and want to permanently disable it. That’s why we posted exclusive tutorials to turn Charms Bar off in Windows 8 and 8.1:
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- How to Disable Charms Bar in Windows 8?
- How to Disable Charms Bar in Windows 8.1?
- How to Disable Charms Bar Hint in Windows 8?
The above tutorials help you in permanently disable Charms Bar in Windows 8 and 8.1 but still sometimes a few users are unable to get rid of the annoying Charms Bar. It still appears on screen randomly even if they didn’t move the mouse cursor to top-right or bottom-right corners of screen.
In such situations, most of the times the Charms Bar appears on screen when the user moves the mouse cursor or swipe from middle-right area of the screen.
Problem Reason:
If you disabled Charms Bar using above mentioned tutorials but it still appears randomly on screen, you might be using a touch-enabled Windows 8/8.1 device such as tablet, laptop with touchpad or All-In-One PC.
Actually all touch-enabled devices come with 3rd party drivers and applications preinstalled and one of these preinstalled applications is responsible for this annoying behavior of Charms Bar.
All computer brands install required drivers and software for the touchpad or touchscreen of your touch-enabled device and this software program contains a few options to access Charms Bar using gestures, etc. These extra options cause this strange behavior of Charms Bar.
Problem Solution:
Solution is very simple. You just need to disable the gesture setting to access Charms Bar. You’ll find the options in Mouse settings present in Control Panel.
Just follow these simple steps to get rid of the annoying Charms Bar permanently on Windows 8/8.1:
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NOTE: We are using a Dell touch laptop to write these steps. The steps will be similar in all other brands such as HP, Sony, Samsung, Asus, Toshiba, Acer, Lenovo, HCL, etc.
STEP 1. Open Control Panel, change View by type to Large icons and click on Mouse icon. Alternatively, you can directly open Mouse settings window by running main.cpl command using RUN dialog box or Start search box.
STEP 2. It’ll open Mouse Properties window. Now look for a tab with the name “Touchpad” or “Device Settings” or “Synaptics Settings” or a similar name. Once you find such tab, click on it.
STEP 3. The tab will allow you to directly edit touchpad settings or will contain a link to launch touchpad settings window.
STEP 4. Once you open touchpad settings window, look for options similar to any of the following:
- Enable edge swipes
- Edge swipe
- Left edge swipe
- Right edge swipe
- Top edge swipe
STEP 5. To completely disable Charms Bar, you need to turn these Edge Swipes options off. Uncheck all options related to edge swipe and save settings.
Alternative Solution:
If you can’t find any option to customize touchpad settings in Control Panel as mentioned in previous method, you can try following Registry tweak to make the trackpad edge swipe zones smaller:
1. Press WIN+R keys together to launch RUN dialog box. Now type regedit in RUN and press Enter. It’ll open Registry Editor.
2. Now go to following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Synaptics\SynTPEnh\ZoneConfig\TouchPadPS2_3\Right Edge Pull
Please note that the key name may slightly differ in your computer.
3. In right-side pane, double-click on LoYRel and change its value to 99999
You can note down the previous value in case you are not happy with the output and decide to restore the value in future.
Setting the value to 99999 will decrease the “Hot” or “Landing” active zone on your computer screen. The higher the value, the smaller the zone. So when you move your mouse pointer on screen corners, the charms bar and calendar will no longer pop up on screen.
You can still access the charms bar by going to the extreme top-right or bottom-right corners of screen and then swiping down or up or a little towards the center of the screen. Of course, you can also access Charms Bar using WIN+C hotkey.
Thanks to our reader “Fran Heredia” for sharing this alternative method…
That’s it. It’ll completely disable Charms Bar and it’ll no longer appear on screen. You can still access Charms Bar by pressing Win+C keys together if you want.
Also check: Windows 8 and 8.1 Hidden Secret Features and Useful Hotkeys
Thank you very much sir. That thing is really annoying and now it’s gone, (lenovo user).
keshav, to disable that annoying chrome bar, click on the tools in the upper right hand corner and choose “Relaunch chrome in windows 8 mode” this will get rid of that bar.
Dear friends,
I think the real problem would be ‘how could a soft programmer be so stupid?’
I understand you create a completely useless and idiot option (like charms). But the fact you prevent me from get rid of it – that’s beyond any logic.
Another disgusting thing is the autocorrect option. The idiots didn’t noticed there are billions in this world who are not English natives, and sometimes write in another language. Well, in this new (and improved) edition you can’t disable this option!
Is this stupid way of thinking THE FUTURE?
… simply charming … 🙂
charm bar does not stay visible long enough to click on charm bottoms
do not want to disable charm bar. want to restore it
Microsoft – please wake-up!
Charms-worms-creeps!
Nightmare with dell touchscreen – windows 8.1 – went mad -hampering serious work.
Tried various options. But always it resurfaces after some time
Hope this works please.
If it does – billion thanks.
Microsoft are u listening?
OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! I turned off the charms but they still kept randomly appearing ALL THE TIME and it was so frustrating. Nothing I tried worked until I found this and IT WORKED!!! So grateful!!!
Freedom at last from irritating, annoying, stupid, ill thought out feature. Thanks so much.
2nd attempt to get rid of stupid, ill thought out, irritating, pointles ‘Charms’ gimmick, followed all tutorials to disable corners etc. then went to my Asus laptop Smart Gesture controls in Control Panel and have now disabled ALL edge gestures. Hopefully that will finally get rid of this extremely annoying waste of space.
I love you. All the tutorials forgot to mention the last part about tuning the edge scrolling for the mouse. This may be the single worst feature about failure 8.1. Thank you fo rthis tutorial that charms bar was driving me up a wall.
Thank you Boogey, This seems to have fixed it, thanks again:
I right clicked on the desktop and opened up “Personalization” at the bottom of the list
Next, I selected the “Change mouse pointer” link in the upper left of the screen
Then I selected the “Device settings” Tab and clicked on the “Settings” button
That is where I saw a boxed checked for “Enable Edge Swipes” – I unchecked it and EUREKA, no more Charms!
Doesn’t work. I’m using a Dell Inspiron 15 7000 series, Windows 8.1 and my touchpad properties/settings aren’t in mouse properties. I did find the settings for touchpad though and turned off both edge swipe and corner options, but the annoying charms bar still appears quite often. Just one more reason I hate Windows 8.
I meant to put that I have a Toshiba Satellite C55B, try to find where you can uncheck “Edge Swipes” ??, so glad I found this info because it was driving me c.zy. gt
I had gotten rid of charms and then in the last update they reappeared. Grrr…. there is another problem that seemed to get worse and that is a touchy-touchpad, opening links that I haven’t clicked on, etc.
Well, in fairy tales, wicked sorcerers always cast charms that put barriers in the way of honest hardworking folks. They did it to be malicious. Kinda like MS, I think.
Anyway, this technique broke the spell. So, thanks.
I hate windows 8. It was designed for tablets and it’s hell trying to get work done on my laptop. The cursor goes to places I don’t intend. All the time. I may try using a mouse and see if that solves the touchy-touchpad cursor problem. Maybe the cursor is cursed by those MS sorcerers, too. 😉 I certainly curse at it all the time.
Once the warranty is up, I’m going for another os. I wonder if it’s possible to go back to xp or should I go for linux. A reason to buy a mac in the future.
I have done all this but if I place the cursor in bottom right corner and move up I get the toolbar on the right plus date and time on the left.
I have not got a touch screen. I am on a Tosh satellite L50 B with Windows 8.1
Garyt!!!!! THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH!!!!! I swear I was starting to drive myself insane going through the control panel did the trick. And it’s safe to say I’m back to my old self again with loving my laptop. Thanks for the information it helped.
OMG, IT WORKED!!! Thank you… this has been a pain in my butt for such a long time.
I have a Dell laptop, and disabled the corners and also the edge swipes as suggested here, and the charms bar still appears when the cursor is at the right hand edge. The corners no longer work, but putting the cursor on the right edge, such as to scroll, still makes the charms bar appear. This has to be the worst thing about Windows 8. I absolutely hate it!
You Rock!!!!! I’ve been trying to fix this for 2 years!!!!! Thank you!
OH………….Thank You Soooooooooo Much……….
I almost broke my laptop for this irritating thing charm …………………….
pls disable win+c hotkey!!! i don’t want to see this thing again!
Hi everybody. I had this same trouble with the touchpad but there was NO option in the settings that enabled to turn off the swipe edges (tried every option and nothing happened).
I found this comment a guy offered in the Microsoft website and IT WORKED!!!
I hope this works for you guys that doesn’t have the option either.
Bellow is textually what this guy wrote:
What you are doing if you follow these steps is you are making the trackpad edge swipe zones smaller.
1. Press Win (the windows button on your keyboard) + R
2. Type regedit and press OK
3. When it asks, “Do you want to make changes”, click Yes
4. Registry Editor opens. Navigate to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Synaptics\SynTPEnh\ZoneConfig\TouchPadPS2_3\Right Edge Pull
(You might have something slightly different from this)
5. Right click on LoYRel, and click “Modify”
6. You need to change the “Value data”. Make a note of what it is so that if you are not happy later you can come back and change it back. Mine read 1388, and I changed it to 99999. Apparently what you are doing is decreasing the “hot” or “landing” active zone on your screen, and the higher the value, the smaller the zone, so when your mouse pointer goes there, the charms bar and calendar will no longer pop up (so I made sure mine was real high!)
7. Change the value, click OK, exit the Registry Editor! I didn’t need to restart my computer; it worked immediately (I’m still holding thumbs though!)
You can still make the charms bar appear if you go to the extreme top or bottom right corners, swipe down (or up) along the edge a little and then in a little towards the centre of the screen, but it’s much easier to just press Win+C. I hope this works for you – it worked for me and ended my frustrations! No more annoying interruptions!
Working on a TOSHIBA with Windows 8.1 Pro. Tried all of the above methods to no avail. Either there were no settings for ‘touch pad’ or when there were, there were no ‘disable swipes’ or ‘charm bar’ settings. I decreased the touch pad sensitivity as well as the edge motion region, turned off the edge motion entirely, but it all made no difference; the charm bar still appears with a slight swipe on the right edge of the touch pad 🙁
Thank you Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much
Right-edge swipe is IMPOSSIBLE to deactivate on my device (I was able to deactive right screen edge nonsense but not the touch pad nonsense).
On a cheap but brand new HP notebook/laptop. Tried tweaking the touchpad and mouse settings and the registry setting (Right Edge Pull etc…) and it still does not work, even AFTER a full reboot.
PLEASE, someone find a SOLUTION for me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you, article is really helpful, thumbs up
sorry but this doesn’t work for me. I followed all the steps but the charms keep appearing as before. what a pain.
Yep, it was the touchpad driver setting inside the mouse interface.
Disabling the swipe did the trick. I had to replace a failing laptop hard drive and in the process lost all my configurations that made 8.1 act and look like Win 7.
THANK YOU! This was ticking me off something fierce.
I was able to fix this just by resetting and re calibrating the touch input settings. You can find it in the control panel under tablet pc settings.
OMG! After literally hours of blindly searching the internet, my computer, and settings, I stumbled upon your solution to turn off this POS ‘Charms’. I couldn’t even search accurately, since I couldn’t even put a name to this. Thank you, and thank you, for saving what little sanity I have left.