Windows Settings

  Windows Settings You Should Change Now!

Even if you have been using Windows forever, there are probably a lot of settings that you never realized were on by default, and should probably change.

These might be settings for privacy, convenience, or just usefulness in general.

So we're going to go over a bunch of settings in Windows, specifically Windows 10, that I think you should change right off the bat, including stuff you should disable, and even features that are good but are not enabled by default. And I believe there are about 15 of them, so you'll hopefully learn at least a couple of new ones.

Setting #1

Let's head to the Windows Update settings.

To get to the main settings Window, 

• You just click the start menu
• Then click the gear
• Go to Update Security
• Then look for Advanced Options 
• Then click Choose how updates are delivered

Here you'll want to make sure the setting at the bottom is set to PCs on my local network and NOT the other one with PCs on the internet. What that would do is download parts of updates from other people who have the update, to supposedly make the downloads faster. But it would also send parts of your updates to other people, using up bandwidth. On your local network, it doesn't matter, but you can disable this altogether by switching the toggle above to off.

Setting #2

Change some WiFi settings

• Now in the main settings window
• Go to Network & Internet, 
• Then the Wi-Fi tab.
• Under WiFi services, you'll see two options talking about suggested open hotspots. I would disable both of those.

Suggested hotspots are supposed to be hotspots that Microsoft has deemed and this would allow your computer to connect to them automatically. But open hotspots are inherently insecure, so you never want your computer to connect to any network without asking you first, its just ridiculous. Below are settings for Hotspot 2.0 which is a relatively new technology, but you can leave that on.

Settings #3

Bunch of privacy settings 

• So start out going to Settings,
•  Then Privacy.
• We'll start in this general tab.
• You'll want to uncheck the first box, and probably the second box as well.

These allow websites and apps to track you based on a unique Advertiser ID to learn more about you and show you more relevant ads.

The next one about your language list might not matter, but I just have it disabled. If you use a language other than English, maybe keep that enabled.

The third setting is also something you may or may not want to disable. It keeps track of which programs you launch most frequently, so you can have the most used list in the start menu. If you don't care about that, disable it.

The next tab we're going to look at is Speech, Inking, and Typing. This feature keeps a record of everything you type or say to Cortana, the virtual assistant, and uses it to get to know you and make better suggestions. For those of you who don't use Cortana, it's something you want to disable, so just turn that off.