How to Remove Cortana’s 'Ask Me Anything' Box

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Cortana is useful, but with voice commands, I really don’t find myself using the “Ask me anything” box for anything other than writing tutorials. Luckily, it’s a breeze to turn off. Once gone, you’ve just freed up a significant amount of space on the taskbar. This valuable real estate is hard to come by, and if you aren’t using Cortana’s search bar, it’s an easy way to gain some additional space for your oft-used applications.

There are two ways to go about this: one turns Cortana’s search bar into an app-sized icon, and the other removes it completely. I’ll show you how to do both.

1. Right-click anywhere on the taskbar.

2. Select Cortana > Show Cortana icon.

Once done, it shrinks the “Ask me anything” bar down to the size of a normal icon, like this:

3. To remove the bar completely, right click the taskbar again.

4. Select Cortana > Hidden.

5. To set Cortana’s search bar back to the default, right click the taskbar once more.

6. Select Cortana > Show search box.

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Bryan Clark

Bryan covers everything you need to know about Windows, social media, and the internet at large for Laptop Mag. Thanks to his extensive knowledge of operating systems and some of the most popular software out there, Bryan has written hundreds of helpful guides, including tips related to Windows 11 drivers, upgrading to a newer version of the OS, editing in Microsoft Photos, or rearranging pages in Google Docs.