We’ve covered how to stop background apps from running in Windows 10, well, visiting the Privacy Page in Settings App and turning off background apps, isn’t enough in Windows 10 v1803 (April 2018 Update) at the moment as they seem broken and keep turning on themselves automatically after restart or shutdown of computer. It is a bug and latest Windows no longer honoring that setting. This affected only clean installed users, but not the users who upgraded from version 1709 to 1803, until Microsoft fixes it, you can use the workaround mentioned in this article to solve the issue.
Background apps broken in Windows 10 April 2018 Update
Current Windows 10 users who clean installed April 2018 Update can notice the following issue related to background apps and is reproducible.
- Click Start > Settings > Privacy > Background Apps
- Turn off ‘Let Apps running in the background’ or disable some select apps.
- Restart your computer,
READ: How to Stop background apps in Windows 10 from running
What happens:
1. Let apps run in the background setting and apps listed below gets enabled again
2. Sometimes, the list of apps area under ‘choose which apps can be run in the background’ look completely blank
Expected result:
Background apps should be turned off forever and shouldn’t be running after shutdown or restart of device which is not happening.
However, users who upgraded from Windows 10 v1709 to v1803 are not facing this issue, as Windows has set Migrated key in registry.
What to do now?
Creating the Migrated key in the registry and setting it value to 4 fixes the issue for us, that’s what we’re going to do below.
Fix Background Apps in Windows 10 v1803 keep turning on even when disabled in Privacy Settings
1. Press Win key +R to open Run dialog, type regedit and press enter
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionBackgroundAccessApplications
3. Here, you can see the list of background apps. Ensure BackgroundAccessApplications is selected, on the right pane, right click new > DWORD (32-bit) value, type name as Migrated and set its value to 4.
Side note: You can also notice GlobalUserDisabled key and its value as 1, keep it as it is, you don’t need to change anything for that.
Note: The Migrated key in registry has been already set on upgraded systems.
4. Close the registry Editor and reboot the system.
5. Now if you visit Background Apps section in Privacy Settings, you’ll notice ‘Let apps run in the background’ and individual app setting under ‘Choose which apps can be run in background’ set to Off. The registry key we’ve created is working. [Thanks to deskmodder]
Note: Doing above, sets all apps background running status globally to off, however, some apps needs to be running in the background to function, which you can set according to your needs by visiting privacy Settings.
Also SEE:
Google Chrome Background Pages and Apps, How to Close Them?
Vivaldi : Get ‘Continue running background apps..’ option
Has that helped you?
