Windows 10–Disable Lock Screen Tool Tips

This only came up recently as I’ve been exploring removing the Ctrl+Alt+Del requirement for logon.  I’ve disabled it on a few test machines.  Then I noticed in the upper right corner of my lock screen little messages, I could click on it, but nothing would happen.  Once I logged in, IE would launch w/ a Bing search about what I had clicked on.  I decided to remove that annoyance.

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I found more info about it here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/itpro/windows/whats-new/windows-spotlight
This is a group policy that controls the Lock Screen image and this tooltip.  I am already controlling the initial lock screen image via OSD, which changes a registry setting to point to a wallpaper I copy local.  We still allow our users to change it, but it starts with a corporate branded wallpaper.

I enabled the setting, pointed the GPO at the locally copied Wallpaper and checked the box.  On my test machine, I still saw the tooltips and the settings under personalization still showed the setting as “ON”

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So now it was time to look for another way to do it.  After some guess work, I found the key in the registry that pertains to the setting: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ContentDeliveryManager]

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To change it, you need to set the registry to: “RotatingLockScreenOverlayEnabled”=dword:00000000

 

Now that we have the setting, we can deploy it.  You could push this via Group Policy, but I’m always a fan of using ConfigMgr, so I’ve created a simple script to deploy during OSD. I’ve created the script, added it to my Windows 10 OSD Package, in the same folder I keep my LockScreen Wallpaper. Download HERE

Load_LockScreenDisableToolTips.cmd:
—–
reg.exe load HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\defuser c:\users\default\ntuser.dat
REG ADD “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\defuser\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ContentDeliveryManager” /V RotatingLockScreenOverlayEnabled /T REG_DWORD /D 00000000 /F
reg.exe unload HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\defuser
—–

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Now in OSD, you create a “Run Command Line” Step and add it like so:
cmd.exe /c LockScreen\Load_LockScreenDisableToolTips.cmd
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OK, now you’ve added it to OSD, but you want to Deploy to your Windows 10 machines in production.

Lets make an Application!

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No Content

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Program: REG ADD “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ContentDeliveryManager” /V RotatingLockScreenOverlayEnabled /T REG_DWORD /D 00000000 /F

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Browse to the registry key and set the Detection to 0

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User Experience: Install for User

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Requirements: OS = Windows 10

Now you can deploy.
Here is the AppEnforceLog from the computer it was deployed to.
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From the log, You can see it ran the command line to disable tooltips

If you have the Settings open, you can actually watch it switch:
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Things to Note:  I did not see tooltips on all machines that I disabled the Ctrl+Alt+Del policy on.  I believe it has to do with a couple of my machines I’ve also connected to MS Accounts for the Store, but most I have not.

PS… I feel a little guilty making a blog post about 1 registry key… but hey, the issue was annoying to me, so hopefully someone finds this useful and doesn’t have to spend time tracking down that key.

2 thoughts on “Windows 10–Disable Lock Screen Tool Tips”

  1. Great post. You should get the wordpress plugin ‘Disabler’ to disable curly quotes for any scripts you post.
    Set Disable Texturization — smart quotes (a.k.a. curly quotes), em dash, en dash and ellipsis.

    Reply
    • Hi everybody (and people who are looking for the same answer than me ;))
      Just a (late) update about this topic… after hardest web researches/tests and with actual WinOS build (21H2), here is how to set a custom lockscreen image (1) without “Fun facts, tips & tricks” options (2)(Crappy Spotlight ;)):

      1) 1st reg.key: “HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\PersonalizationCSP”
      Value name: “LockScreenStatus” (DWORD) // value to “1”
      Value name: “LockScreenPath” (SZ) // value to “\\share\picture.jpg”

      2) 2nd reg.key: “HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ContentDeliveryManager”
      Value name: “SubscribedContent-338387Enabled” (DWORD) // value to “0”

      You can use GPO rule (registry push) or ps script to do so.
      Enjoy and cheers 😉

      Reply

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