Try out this latest change without waiting for its launch

Jan 3, 2019 13:20 GMT  ·  By

One of the changes that Microsoft is believed to be working on for Windows 10 19H1 is separating Cortana and the Windows Search in the taskbar.

In the current stable builds of Windows 10, Cortana and Search share the same UI, so you’re more or less forced to use the digital assistant even for simple things like searching for a while.

While this at some level makes sense, as it kind of makes Cortana a feature that you can’t avoid on the desktop, not everyone likes it, so Microsoft is planning to let users separate the two in the upcoming Windows 10 feature update.

The software giant is already experimenting with this change, and some users are now allowed to try it out in the latest preview builds of Windows 10 19H1. But given it’s a limited trial, not everyone can get a taste of how it works. Unless you follow this little tutorial.

Fortunately, it’s possible to separate Cortana and Windows Search on the desktop no matter Microsoft allows you to or not. Obviously, you have to be running the latest Windows 10 19H1 preview build because it’s the only one that comes with the code to allow this change.

The second thing you’re going to need is a little tool called mach2 and which lets you tweak certain features of Windows 10, enable experimental changes, and try them out before they are released to everyone. The app is available on GitHub here.

Separating Search and Cortana in Windows 10 19H1

Mach2 comes as a ZIP archive, so extract all files and then you need to run it using Command Prompt. Launch an elevated Command Prompt (Start > cmd.exe > Run as administrator) and navigate to the path where all files are extracted. To do this, type the following command in Command Prompt:

cd file-path As an example, the path for my testing is the following (with the default location used): cd C:\Users\bgdftw\Downloads\mach2_0.3.0.0_x64 Once you’re there in the Command Prompt, you need to run the following command: mach2 enable -v 2 17983783 This will separate the Cortana icon from the Search tool in the taskbar, but only after you reboot your system. Killing the explorer.exe process isn’t enough, so you must restart the computer to see the changes made to the taskbar. After the boot, the taskbar should look like in the screenshots here.
Separating Search and Cortana in Windows 10 19H1

Microsoft is expected to make this change official with the release of Windows 10 19H1 in the spring, but for now everyone waits for the company to actually announce it as part of the Windows Insider program. As I said earlier, it’s still a limited test for now, so only a few insiders see the change, but at some point in the future all Windows 10 preview build users should be able to separate Cortana from the search tool.

Windows 10 19H1 is projected to be finalized in the spring, and as per Microsoft’s typical release schedule, the RTM should be ready and shipped to insiders in March. If everything goes according to the plan, the global rollout should kick off in April.

Needless to say, more changes are very likely to make it to the desktop by the time the RTM is signed off, and Cortana itself could get further improvements. At some point during the development process of Redstone 5, it was even rumored that Microsoft could move Cortana in the system tray in order to keep the taskbar clean, but for now it looks like the first step is to separate it from search.

As with any unofficial change to the desktop, you should create a system backup to be able to restore at any point in the future.

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Separating Search and Cortana in Windows 10 19H1
Separating Search and Cortana in Windows 10 19H1Separating Search and Cortana in Windows 10 19H1
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