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

One of the big annoyances present in Windows 8 was “Hot Corners” feature which allows users to access some predefined shortcuts by moving the mouse cursor to top-left or top-right corners of computer screen. When you move the cursor to top-left corner of screen, the “App Switcher” or “App Switch List” is shown which allows you to navigate between running apps or close running apps. When you move the cursor to top-right corner of screen, “Charms Bar” is shown which provides quick access to 5 shortcuts: Search, Share, Start, Devices and Settings.

Although these hot corners were designed to help Windows 8 users but most of the users found them annoying and useless. They wanted to disable these hot corners but Microsoft didn’t provide any option to disable these irritating hot corners. That’s why we had to take help of 3rd party tools such as Classic Shell to disable hot corners in Windows 8 as shown in following tutorial:

How to Disable Hot Corners (Charms Bar, Start Screen Thumbnail, App Switch List) in Windows 8?

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Now Microsoft has released Windows 8.1 update for Windows 8 users which comes with many new features and fixes and one of these new features is the built-in option to disable hot corners in Windows 8.1.

Now Windows 8.1 users will not need to use any extra software to turn off these hot corners. You can disable hot corners quickly and easily using Taskbar Properties or PC Settings.

If you are using Windows 8.1 and want to disable “Charms Bar” or “App Switch List” hot corners, this tutorial will definitely help you:

METHOD 1: Using Taskbar Properties

1. Right-click on Taskbar and select Properties option.

2. It’ll open Taskbar and Navigation properties window.

3. Go to “Navigation” tab and uncheck following options present in “Corner navigation” section:

  • When I point to the upper-right corner, show the charms
  • When I click the upper-left corner, switch between my recent apps

Disable_Windows_8_Hot_Corners_Taskbar_Properties.png

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1st option will disable Charms Bar and the 2nd option will disable App Switch list.

4. Apply the changes and it’ll immediately disable hot corners in Windows 8.1.

METHOD 2: Using PC Settings

You can also disable hot corners using PC Settings (aka Metro Control Panel).

1. Move your mouse cursor to top-right or bottom-right corner of screen and click on Settings icon present in Charms Bar.

2. Now click on “Change PC settings” option.

3. It’ll open PC Settings page. Now go to “PC & devices -> Corners & edges” section.

Disable_Windows_8_Hot_Corners_PC_Settings.png

4. As you can see in the above screenshot, you can disable the hot corners by setting both options present in “Corner navigation” section to Off.

NOTE 1:

If you still get Charms Bar on your Windows 8/8.1 computer, try to turn off “Enable Edge Swipes” or similar option present in “Control Panel -> Mouse” properties to disable Charms Bar gesture as mentioned in following tutorial:

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

NOTE 2:

If you want to make these changes using Registry Editor, check out following tutorial:

Registry Tweaks to Customize Taskbar and Start Screen Settings in Windows 8.1

Published in: Troubleshooting Guides, 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

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  1. Anyone recommend a better system? Ive tried Everything, so now I would like to dump Windows Why not join me? as it seems windows dose not care.

  2. The only program that helped a little killing to charms menu was onestart by anvisoft. But they do not update the program so it started to lose it’s hold on the charms bar. Microsoft level II techs even tried to fix my new Acer aspire laptop 3 times, they completely screwed my registry, now my Windows 8.1- the worst Microsoft product ever will not install any critical updates for over 8 months now. Microsoft has screwed us royally by refusing to admit & fix these 2 major issues. Charm Bar Virus, that is what it is & update failures. If yiou are considering a new PC. Run as fast as you can to MAC.

  3. John Bird, thanks SO much! In my case it was just the Synaptics settings, exactly like you mentioned. Now the annoying bar is off. Thanks you very much!

  4. To stop annoying Charm bar and Start menu randomly appearing in Windows 8.1, the following worked for me on a Toshiba Satellite laptop:
    Control Panel; Mouse; Device Settings; click on Settings in the box; then unclick Enable Edge Swipes,
    Thanks to person above who also seemed to suggest this solution. So glad that annoying problem is fixed

  5. I’m running 8.1 and tried turning off charms using both methods. Neither worked. They should have called them “Pains” instead of “Charms”.

  6. I have a Toshiba Satellite. I finally think I found how to do it on my computer. It seems to be working anyway. Go to Control Panel, Hardware & Sounds, click on mouse, go to the Device Settings tab, click on settings, and then uncheck edge swipe.

  7. I have an HP Pavillion and used Tulash’s method but it looked a little different. I searched for mouse properties. Clicked it and chose Touch pad. Then I clicked the highlighted “click to change touch pad settings”. Then I chose Edge swipe. I unclicked the three boxes in here and this worked! Hallelujah! No more annoying pop ups!!!

  8. Thanks. That worked. Windows 8.1 is actually “Microsoft Classic” as in its been engineered so only the developer team fools at Microsoft find it to be logical and user friendly.

  9. HOW COULD ANYONE DEVOLOP SUCH A TERRIBLE WINDOWS After all these yours of using windows I am going back to windows 7 and will NEVER by a new windows.

  10. HP laptop: go to Control Panel, click on HP Control Zone Settings and wah-lah…you are there! Uncheck “Enable Edge Swipes.” I’ve done it and now, I’m gonna see if it works. ๐Ÿ™‚ (On my computer none of the other instructions matched my HP layout…until I stumbled across the HP Control Zone Settings item sitting right there in the list within Control Panel. Gonna be SO easily accessible!! I’m thrilled.

  11. YES!
    Right-click taskbar to disable corner activation of CHARMS worked for me (HP ENVY TOUCH).
    I’m happy with that.
    Playing with edge-swipe, I decided not to remove the option after discovering that I really don’t have to click OUT of the unexpected display, all I have to do is repeat the right->left edge-swipe. Much easier to deal with accidental CHARMS display.
    Thanks for the simple, straight-forward instructions!

  12. This isn’t working for me either in an up to date install of 8.1. I was able to remove the charms from appearing at the top corner, but they’re forever popping up from the bottom. I’ve done taskbar, touchpad, mouse, and registry changes and the bottom corner is still active. As that’s where I naturally rest my mouse pointer while using operating systems that aren’t garbage, it’s driving me c.zy.

  13. This does not work, I tried it, I also went into pc setting, pc devices and corners and turned it off and it’s still on, I went to properties/navigation and this does not work either, I hate this stupid thing!!

  14. NONE OF THIS WORKED with my Acer Aspire V laptop. I’ve tried everything to get rid of these annoying Charms – if EVER I’ve known of anything to be mis-named, it’s Microsoft’s Charms. How about just calling it The Microsoft Annoyance Bar?

  15. can disable all corners but the most annoying, bottom right hand, HATE THE BOTTOM RIGHT! such a pain in the a–! I despise windows 8 on the sole idea of dealing with that corner popping up constantly and unwantedly! boo

  16. The bar only appears when you swipe towards the left on the right side off your mousepad, not on the left side. So i keep my left finger on the left side of the pad ๐Ÿ™‚ and when i want it to appear, i swipe my right finger towards the left, on the right side of the pad..

  17. I’m using windows 8.1 and have an Acer computer. This solution does not work and there is no touchpad option to choose from in the Mouse section. The Charms bar along with the date bar both show up randomly out of the blue.

    This feature is incredibly nerve-wracking. Had I known, I would never have bought a computer using windows 8 or 8.1. Aggravating!

  18. I think the only way to stop them is by uninstalling the os and revert back to 7 or XP, my laptop is still under warranty so its going back today, had enough of these charms to the point where I’m close to throwing the lap top out the window and if it wasn’t for the warranty I probably would!

  19. John Bird – THANK YOU! This finally disabled that annoying swipe from the right that brought up the Charms menus and big clock! I couldn’t find any other way, though the left swipe option is available to be disabled in the touchpad options, the swipe from right is not.

  20. I managed to completely disable this annoyance by using Start8 software, although it’s not free.

  21. Neither Method 1 nor Method 2 remove lower right corner activation of the charms, so it should not be stated here that “You can disable hot corners quickly and easily using Taskbar Properties or PC Settings.” These two methods only remove upper right corner activation of charms.

  22. I followed your instructions but was stumped when the mouse properties box was not the same as yours.I had spent weeks trying to find a solution so I kept going.I went to task bar and navigation icon in control panel and disabled the right swipe charm bar there.Best thing was to put control panel into large icons.

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