The privacy dials: five switches that matter
The telemetry block lives in Settings → Privacy & security. Diagnostics & feedback → Send diagnostic data should sit on Required only, which cuts the bulk of the diagnostic payload; the same page hides Tailored experiences, which opts you out of personalized tips when switched off. In the General page, the advertising ID toggle stops apps from building a profile of your interests, and the two suggestion toggles next to it remove the steady drip of promoted Store apps.
Activity history, under the same Privacy & security section, can be cleared and left off — on a personal PC its main consumer is the cross-device timeline, not you. Location deserves the global-off treatment with per-app exceptions only where it earns its keep: weather, maps, nothing else. A quarterly pass over app permissions — camera, microphone, notifications, background execution — catches everything that helped itself during installation.
The noise switches nobody misses
The next five are pure quality of life: nothing leaks, nothing slows down, Windows simply gets quieter. Each one takes seconds to switch off. All of them live where noted, no account and no registry surgery required.
- Get tips and suggestions (System → Notifications → Additional settings): kills the occasional self-promoting toast without touching real notifications
- Widgets and its news feed (taskbar settings): removes a permanently running web feed from your taskbar — a real RAM and attention saver
- Search highlights (Privacy & security → Search permissions): removes the daily picture and trending searches from the search box
- Lock screen trivia (Personalization → Lock screen): switch from Windows spotlight to a picture, and the lock screen stops fetching content
- Recall snapshots on Copilot+ PCs (Privacy & security → Recall): not on every machine, but if the setting exists, decide deliberately instead of by default
The performance levers that actually move something
The last five do the real work. Startup apps under Task Manager → Startup apps is the single highest-impact setting on the list — every disabled entry is a program that never loads, so disable first and uninstall what you never miss. Per-app background permissions (Apps → Installed apps → app → Advanced options) stop UWP apps from waking to poll, with the honest caveat that this is battery life more than raw speed. Delivery Optimization (Windows Update → Advanced options) set to local network only saves your upload without losing LAN sharing, and scoping the search index to your real document folders instead of Enhanced mode ends the constant indexing churn. Power mode — Best performance on a desktop — quietly beats every registry tweak a tuning guide has ever recommended.
Questions and Answers
What Windows 11 settings should I change first?
Startup apps in Task Manager, diagnostic data to Required, and the advertising ID off — the first buys the most speed, the other two the most privacy. The rest of the fifteen can wait for a spare evening.
Do privacy settings slow Windows 11 down?
No — telemetry toggles change what Windows sends, not how fast it runs. Only the noisy ones have a speed side effect: Widgets, search highlights and the lock-screen feed each stop background fetching when disabled.
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