The Charms Bar in Windows 8 is the bar of icons that slides in from the right side of the screen when swiping on a touch device, or when clicking in the lower-right or upper-right corners of the screen while using a mouse. This bar houses important functions such as app settings, PC settings, device control, sharing options, and the ability to search your PC or your current app.

Charms Bar can also be quite distracting at times, especially when you shake it up every time you move the cursor over Close button in an opened window.

And since you can easily display the Charms Bar by pressing the Win + C hotkey on your keyboard, the ‘Hot Corners’ feature basically feel a bit redundant on non-touchable Windows 8 and 8.1 PCs.

On Windows 8 touch devices, the Charms Bar is generally very useful, but those who use Windows 8 primarily on a desktop with a mouse and keyboard may find it distracting, and may be frustrated by inadvertently triggering the bar when the mouse is moved to the right corners of the screen. To avoid these issues, here are two ways to manage and disable the Charms Bar in Windows 8.1.

Disable the Upper-Right Charms Bar Hot Corner

Some Windows 8 users may want to keep the Charms Bar but just limit the chances of accidentally triggering it with the mouse. To do this, Microsoft provides a user option to disable the hot corner Charms Bar trigger when you move your mouse cursor into the top-right corner of your screen.

Head to your Desktop, right-click on the Taskbar, and choose Properties. In the Taskbar and Navigation Properties window, click on the Navigation tab and uncheck the box labeled “When I point to the upper-right corner, show the charms”.

Click Apply to save your change and move your mouse cursor to the upper-right corner of your screen. You’ll notice that the Charms Bar no longer appears, but you can still access it by moving your mouse to the lower-right corner of the screen. This configuration provides a compromise that allows a user to still access the important functions of the Charms Bar while minimizing the frustration of accidentally triggering it when the mouse cursor moves to the top-right corner of the screen.

Disable the Charms Bar Completely

Other Windows 8 users may just want to kill the Charms Bar completely, at least on the Desktop.

First up, open Registry Editor by heading to Start Screen, typing regedit and pressing Enter on your keyboard.

Now navigate to the following registry key in Registry Editor:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER>Software>Microsoft>Windows>CurrentVersion>ImmersiveShell

Now go to ImmersiveShell > New > Key from the context menu, and then name the New Key as EdgeUI.

Right-click the EdgeUI key, point to New, DWORD (32-bit) Value and then name the new DWORD as DisableCharmsHint.

Now double-click the newly created DWORD value, type 1 and click OK. You may (or just restart explorer.exe process) also need to reboot Windows for the changes to come into effect. Once done, it will disable both the top-right and bottom-right hot corners that reveal the Charms Bar.

Disable Charms Bar in Windows 8.1 Using Charms Bar Killer

The last and possibly the simplest method to disable Charms Bar in Windows 8.1 is using a free program called Charms Bar Killer created by WinAero. When launched, Charms Bar Killer sits in the system tray and automatically kills the Charms Bar for you.

You can also right-click its notification icon and enable Kill Top Left Corner to disable Windows App Switcher as well. Besides disabling the hot corners, you can also set it to automatically boot at system start up, as well as hide it’s system tray icon.

In case you want to reactivate the hot corners, simply exit Charms Bar Killer and restart Windows Explorer from Task Manager.

Voila! You’re now free from the ever distracting hot corners of Windows 8 and 8.1.

Download

To download the tool specified in this article you will need to register and/or login on HeelpBook. It's simple and free.
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