How to Stop Windows Apps From Running in the Background

On Windows 10 there are plenty of apps run in the background to take advantage of additional features such as the ability to download data, update live tiles show notifications, and more. Although these features can be useful, these apps running on the background consume extra system resources, drain the battery, and waste bandwidth. Disabling background apps running on Windows 10 not only save battery, data usage, and (some) system resources but also optimizes the system performance. Here in this post, we have 3 different ways to Stop Windows 10 Apps from Running in the Background.

Disable background apps Windows 10

Note: Disabling the background apps doesn’t stop the actual apps from working. You can still launch and use them. This will only prevent these apps from downloading data, using CPU/RAM, and consuming battery while you are not using them.

Turn off the background app using privacy settings

• Press the Windows key & X shortcut. Here select Settings from the list.
• Go to the Privacy category, On the left column, scroll down the cursor and tap Background Apps.
• Here under the “Choose which apps can run in the background” section, turn off the toggle switch for the apps you want to restrict.
• Also under the “Background Apps” section, you can turn off the Let apps in the background toggle switch to prevent any app from running in the background toggle switch.
• That’s all The item disabled above won’t run again in the background until commanded otherwise.

Note: You can still use the apps normally, but when you close them, all the processes will be terminated until you launch the app again.

Turn on Battery saver mode (Laptop users only)

• If you are a laptop user, then you can prevent apps from running in the background enabling the Battery Saver mode.
• Open Settings, then Click on System.
• Click on Battery, here Under the “Battery saver” section, turn off the Battery saver status until next charge toggle switch.
• After completing the steps, none of your apps will be allowed to run in the background while the feature is enabled.

Disable the app using the Registry Editor

Also, you can tweak on Windows registry editor to disable background running apps on your system. here follow the steps below.

• Press Windows + R, type regedit, and ok to open the Windows registry editor,
• Back up the registry database, then navigate to the path written below.
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\BackgroundAccessApplication
• Create a new DWORD (32-bit) value here with the name Default and set its value to 1.
• Similarly, create another DWORD (32-bit) value with the name Migrated and change its value to 4.
• Lastly, close Registry Editor and reboot your system.
• This process will disable all apps running at the background only for the individual user.

Disable background apps Windows 10 group policy

you can also apply group policy to prevent the Windows App from running in the background. Here is the procedure

• Press Windows + R, type gredit.msc and ok to open local group policy editor,
• Explore the  Computer Configuration → Administrative Templates → Windows Components → App Privacy.
• Scroll down the cursor to locate the name “Let Windows apps run in the background” and double-click on the same.
• Now hit on the Enabled radio button followed by Default for all users using the drop-down menu.
• Here select Force Deny then Apply and OK to save the changes.
• The selected apps won’t run in the background anymore.
• Restart Windows to take effect the changes.

If you’re looking to stop classic applications from using background resources, you need to close the program manually and stop the programs from running startup.