I saw your earlier article about how to hide Copilot from my Taskbar, which was great. But how can I hide it from Microsoft Edge too? I don’t know why it’s suddenly everywhere!
2023 has unquestionably been the year of artificial intelligence. From the hundreds of new products and services launched to the endless chatter on social media sites – and in the news – about the threats and promises of this rather astonishing new tech, you’d have to be living under that proverbial rock to avoid being bombarded with all the AI and ChatGPT news. Microsoft eagerly jumped on that bandwagon, recognizing that the core features offer tremendous possibilities to make Windows and the Office suite smarter and easier to use. After some experimentation where it was known as “Bing AI” the smart underpinnings of both are now known as Microsoft Copilot and, as you say, it’s now accessible from a button on either your Taskbar in Windows or Microsoft’s Edge web browser.
Unless, of course, you’re not interested and don’t want to see those weird new buttons and icons all over the place. Fortunately, you can remove ’em. You can start by Hiding Copilot from your Windows Taskbar but in this article, I’m going to offer more detail of how to hide the Copilot icon and button from Microsoft Edge. Remember, Edge works on Mac too, so if you have your Edge browsers all logged in to the same account and working with sync, removing it on one computer should have it vanish from all of ’em if it’s working correctly.
WHERE IS THAT COPILOT ICON ANYWAY?
You’ve already noticed the addition to the navbar in Microsoft Edge, but for people who aren’t sure what I’m talking about, here’s a pic that highlights the new icon:
Unusually, it’s a button that you don’t have to click for it to react: Just moving your cursor over the Copilot icon is enough to have it open up a new window within Microsoft Edge:
It’s okay if you sidetrack and experiment with it for a minute or two. 🙂
HOW TO HIDE THE COPILOT ICON IN EDGE
Notice in the Copilot Chat window there’s a “•••” icon (vertically oriented) near the top. Click on it and a menu appears:
As highlighted, choose “Notification and App settings” to proceed. This takes you directly into the Settings area, which you can also reach by clicking on this shortcut link: edge://settings/sidebar/appSettings too.
To hide Copilot, simply click on the control adjacent to “Show Copilot” so it doesn’t show the blue “on” color and it should instantly vanish from the frame of your Edge app:
Not too complicated, all in all.
BONUS: HIDE OTHER EDGE BUTTONS
While we’re talking about all the buttons that appear on the Microsoft Edge navbar, know that if you go into Settings (off the “•••” link adjacent to your profile pic) and then Appearance, you can scroll down and find a list of all the icons that can be shown or hidden:
As you can see, you can add or hide a Home button, a Forward button, Extensions button, Favorites, Collections, Split screen, and much more. Scroll down and try just showing those you use a lot. Easy!
Pro Tip: I’ve been writing about Windows since the beginning. While you’re here, please check out my extensive Windows help area for hundreds of other useful tutorials and how-to articles. Thanks!