How to Disable Charms Bar Hint in Windows 8?

NOTE: This tutorial helps in turning off the “Charms Bar Hint” feature. It doesn’t disable the Charms Bar feature. If you want to disable Charms Bar completely, check out following tutorials:

How to Disable Hot Corners (Charms Bar, etc) in Windows 8?

How to Disable Hot Corners (Charms Bar and App Switch List) in Windows 8.1?

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[Fix] Charms Bar Randomly Appears on Windows 8/8.1 Devices

If you are using Windows 8 Release Preview or previously released Windows 8 testing builds such as Developer Preview or Consumer Preview or may be recently released Windows 8 RTM build, you must be aware of new “Charms Bar” feature of Windows 8. Its similar to a dock utility and automatically appears on screen as soon as you move your mouse cursor to top-right corner or bottom-right corner of screen.

It provides quick access to following 5 system components: Search, Share, Start Screen, Devices and Settings.

You can also access Charms Bar using “Win+C” keyboard shortcut. Although Charms Bar was designed to help Windows 8 users in quickly accessing these system tools but sometimes it becomes quite annoying when you move the cursor to top-right corner of screen to close a window or other tasks and Charms Bar automatically appears on screen.

Disable_Charms_Bar_Top_Right_Hot_Corner_Windows_8.png

So today in this tutorial, we are going to share a simple Registry tweak which will help you in disabling Charms Bar hint in Windows 8. It’ll not disable Charms Bar but it’ll turn Charms Bar hint off, so Charms Bar will not appear as soon as you move the cursor to top-right or bottom-right corners. But it’ll appear if you move the cursor to top-right corner and then move it downwards. Same case will happen with bottom-right corner. Also the hotkey “Win+C” will also show Charms Bar.

So if you apply this Registry tweak, you’ll not accidentally get Charms Bar on screen. It’ll only appear when you actually want it.

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So without wasting time, lets start the tutorial:

1. Press “WIN+R” key combination to launch RUN dialog box then type regedit and press Enter. It’ll open Registry Editor and go to following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ImmersiveShell\

2. Under ImmersiveShell key, create a new key EdgeUI.

3. Now select newly created key “EdgeUI” and in right-side pane, create a new DWORD DisableCharmsHint and set its value to 1

Disable_Charms_Bar_Hint_Windows_8.png

4. That’s it. It’ll immediately disable Charms Bar hint feature. You’ll not need to log off or restart the system.

NOTE: If you want to enable the Charms Bar hint feature again, simply delete the DWORD “DisableCharmsHint” or set its value to 0

PS: If you don’t want to modify registry and want a ready-made registry script to do the task automatically, download following ZIP file, extract it and run the extracted REG file. It’ll ask for confirmation, accept it:

Download Registry Script

Thanks to our reader “DaNieL” for sharing this tweak…

Do you like Charms Bar feature of Windows 8 or you hate this annoying thing? Feel free to share your opinion in your comment…

Published in: Windows 8

About the author: Vishal Gupta (also known as VG) has been awarded with Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award. He holds Masters degree in Computer Applications (MCA). He has written several tech articles for popular newspapers and magazines and has also appeared in tech shows on various TV channels.

Comments

NOTE: Older comments have been removed to reduce database overhead.

  1. OK I followed these directions and restarted my laptop only to now not be able to turn my computer on! I can’t get a mouse to show up and I can’t get the use login screen to show up.

  2. ^^ This Registry trick will never harm your computer in any condition. Its a simple tweak to disable Charms Bar hint. It can’t make your system not bootable. There must be some other reason behind your problem. Did you install any 3rd party software?

  3. does not work for me šŸ™ I have done all as the instructions say, but Charm bar still comes up :-(((

  4. BLESS YOU KIND PERSON. This was driving me absolutely flipping nuts. I can now browse without frustration!

  5. Thank-you SO much – that stupid charms bar has been driving me c.zy since I got Windows 8 a few weeks ago! Hooray!

  6. The charms bar kept appearing at random times when working on a full screen ap.
    Hope fully this tweek will stop that happening. I had already disabled the corner things but it did not stop charms.

  7. I changed my mouse settings as mentioned above , to no avail. This worked great! Thank you so much!

  8. this is why i don’t bother with ‘help’ columns – they are as useless as ‘charms’ – if readers are coming to this page under search terms like ‘turn off charms windows 8’ – why am i sitting here wasting time when half of the ‘advice’ is basically an explanation of how ‘charms’ work – lame lame lame

  9. Uhh.. This didnt work for me…… and although it may be kind of stupid that Windows has all these stupid registry things to be able to enable or disable certain things, imagine finding something annoying on a Mac…….. then you’d be screwed……

  10. Thank you for the fix. I was warned about charms by a Verizon tech the day before I bought my new machine with Win8. He told me “look out for the charms”. I asked him what he was talking about, he said ‘you’ll find out”. He was right, I found out, was quite unhappy with this feature. Glad I Googled for a fix and found this one. A little scary, I get nervous tweaking around the registry editor, but I followed the steps and it worked the first time. Thanks again!

  11. With all my heart, “Thank you!” Charms were making it impossible for me to work with my embroidery software. You did good! (Oh, and I second the sentiments of almost everyone else above me!)

  12. In control panel, I typed in mouse, then clicked on navigation properties, then unchecked the first box that references the charms. After I restarted the computer, they no longer appeared on the right side. Still trying to get rid of the google chrome drop down though.

  13. I found that there was already a Ui folder there, so I just changed it to 0 and the bars disappeared. Thank you!!!

  14. Hello…I followed the directions and still the charm bar displays 20+ times per day. I followed the directions and still no fix. Any new hints (Lenovo Yoga user…always plugged in).

  15. side swipe is the issue with non touch screen windows 8 etc to turn off side swipe if you cant just see what too do???

    right click the desktop space, choose personalise, then change ” desktop icons “, add a tick to control panel and choose ok.
    then open the control panel icon , now on the desktop and choose “view by small icons”, then choose “mouse”, then look along and choose “touchpad”, then choose “options”, then the mouse pad choices applet comes up {if not look too the drivers}
    then untick “right edge swipe” and perhaps “top edge swipe”. ok if you have a touch screen but not good for a mouse pad, better unticked. then close the window and reboot.

    you can add this .reg to further suppress the swipe bar. after both its only available if you move the pointer far right top or bottom corner … then sharp left. this is also what microsoft says it does

    pitty there default settings enable swipe and dont detect touch LCD and only enable swipe if you have touch and drag etc…

  16. Thank you so much – was ready to return to my old laptop with Win7. Used your automatic link, worked great but did have to reboot to get rid of charms bar!

  17. Totally not necessary. The charm bar can be disabled in the mouse settings, in my case in the ELAN smart pad settings. This way you won’t keep accessing it by accident when you swipe your mouse across the screen.

  18. Doesn’t work. I have disabled all swipe and corner moves through Classic Shell, under Mouse settings (mine gives me no option for touchpad or navigation under Mouse), and have employed this registry change. Same effect. I touch the right edge and Charms pops out. I managed to disable this in 8.1 but 8 is a PITA.

  19. This is what I did on my Toshiba Satellite laptop which has Windows 8.1, the other methods like setting up DisableCharmsHint in the folder EdgeUI in the Registry Editor didn’t work; in fact EdgeUI was already set up with “Disable TLCorner” and “Disable TRCorner”. Strange!
    Open ā€œPC Settingsā€ then open ā€œControl Panelā€ then open ā€œHardware and Soundā€ then in ā€œDevices and Printersā€ open ā€œMouseā€. A ā€œMouse Propertiesā€ popup will appear. Go the ā€œDevice Settingsā€ tab and open ā€œSettingsā€. The popup ā€œProperties for Synaptics Clickpad V1.2 on SMB Portā€ appears [name of popup may be different for other laptops]. Untick the box next to ā€œEnable Edge Swipesā€ then left click the ā€œOKā€ button and so on.

  20. Best free app Classic Shell! It does everything you need (If something annoying in Windows 8) šŸ˜‰

    I even doesn’t know that this app could remove Charms Bar till I tried to edit register. I found that the key EdgeUI is already created. And a first idea hit my brain was customization program Classic Shell šŸ˜€

  21. I absolutely hate the charms bar, and I hate not having a start menu. Every single person I’ve ever seen use windows used the start menu to get around and find programs. Then microsoft decided nobody wanted that. Who wants to browse your programs, when you can search by name? How about somebody who doesn’t want to memorize every damn program name on my computer! I bought a computer so I wouldn’t have to memorize everything, microsoft! Let me look for my program by seeing what’s there, not by guessing the damn name.

    The charms feature is another unbelievable turd. It pops up on me hundreds of time per week when I don’t want it, and I’ve never, ever, ever, used it to do something on purpose. I almost can’t believe these software idiots would design something like that and not give us the option to shut it off. Are they really so stupid they can’t imagine we don’t want a menu to cover our program every time we mouse to the side of the screen?

    Why don’t car manufacturers change which pedals do what every year? Because that would be stupid, that’s why! Why don’t they hide the steering wheel, and have the car guess which way we’re trying to go? Because that would be stupid, that’s why!

    I’m all for new features, but for God’s sake, give me the option to do it the way I already know.

  22. Rods idea was the only one that worked for me, so thanks Rod.

    Open properties for Synaptics Clickpad V?? [name of popup may be different for other laptops]. Untick the box next to ā€œEnable Edge Swipesā€ then left click the ā€œOKā€ button.

    Nothing else worked and its so much better now.

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