How to hide Windows 10 Settings pages with Creators Update?
This trick will allow system administrator to allow/block any settings pages selectively to any user, using the Windows Group Policy Editor.- Article authored by Kunal Chowdhury on .
This trick will allow system administrator to allow/block any settings pages selectively to any user, using the Windows Group Policy Editor.- Article authored by Kunal Chowdhury on .
Corporates some time needs to disable/hide few settings pages to block the users from changing the system settings. Windows 10 Creators Update provides the system admins to show/hide specific settings pages by tuning them in the Windows Group Policy Settings.
In this post, we will learn how to control the visibility of the pages. Before proceeding, make sure that you are an admin user.
If you are using Windows 10 Creators Update, as a system administrator, you can now control how the Windows 10 Settings pages and selectively show or hide the pages. To do this, first open the Windows Group Policy Editor and navigate to the following section 'Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Control Panel -> Settings Page Visibility', as shown in the below screenshot:
The Settings Page Visibility screen will by default set to 'Not Configured'. To selectively show/hide the settings pages, you need to first enable the settings.
Once you enable the settings, an input box below will get enabled to provide you option to selectively show/hide the settings pages. This policy has two modes: it can either specify a list of settings pages to show or a list of pages to hide.
To specify a list of pages to show, the policy string must begin with "showonly:" as a prefix (without quotes), and to specify a list of pages to hide, it must begin with "hide:" as a prefix.
To show only the Windows Update, Bluetooth, About and Activation pages, enter the following settings in the input box: 'showonly:windowsupdate;bluetooth;about;activation;' as shown in the below screenshot:
This will only show the settings pages mentioned in the input box. If any page group has no items to display, the page group will get invisible automatically. For example, the above policy, when applied, will make only three page groups to visible with the mentioned settings pages only visible:
The another prefix 'hide:' can allow you to hide only specific pages mentioned in the policy settings. Rest of the settings pages will be visible. So, using this policy settings, you can selectively hide Windows 10 Settings pages.
For example, Windows Insider Program page is visible in 'Update & Security' section. In case you want to block it for your users, you can enter 'hide:windowsinsider;' as shown below to block the access:
When done, you will not find the Windows Insiders settings page. Likewise, you can enter multiple settings pages URLs separated by semicolons. Check the below screenshot for reference:
The following settings page URLs are available for you to use, which you can enter as semicolon separated values prefixed by 'showonly:' or 'hide:' mode:
I hope that the post was helpful for you to customize your system settings and selectively allow/block the settings pages in your organization. If you liked the post, don't forget to share it in your network and share your feedback. Stay tuned for more articles, tips & tricks on Windows 10 Creators Update.
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