How To Disable The "Get Windows 10" Icon And Notifications

Over the last week, many users received the "Get Windows 10" app on their devices. In a previous article we've shown the steps required for you to reserve a free Windows 10 upgrade for your device. However, there are also many users who don't want to do that, or just don't want to see the app's icon and notifications. This article will show you how you can remove the "Get Windows 10" icon from the notification tray or even how to completely disable it.
If you don't want to see the "Get Windows 10" icon displayed in the system tray, you can hide it, disable it or even uninstall the app. Here are all the methods we found:

1. Hide "Get Windows 10" and turn off its notifications

To hide the app's icon and notifications you will have to customize the notification area icons. Click or tap on the small arrow from the left side of the system tray. This should open a small popup with all the hidden icons. On its bottom, there is a link called Customize. Click or tap it.

This action will open the Notification Area Icons window. Inside, look for an icon called GWX (Get Windows 10). In the Behaviours column, select "Hide icon and notifications".

Click or tap OK and the "Get Windows 10" icon and notifications should now be hidden.

2. Use Task Manager To Stop The GWX.exe Process

This method turns off the "Get Windows 10" app, thus removing its icon and disabling its notifications. However, stopping its process is only a temporary solution. Once you restart your Windows device, the app's process will start again and, with it, the icon and the notifications will reappear.

If you only intend to temporarily disable the "Get Windows 10" app, launch the Task Manager and switch to its detailed view.

Then, inside the Processes tab, scroll until you find the the process called GWX. Click or tap its name to select it, and then press End task on the bottom right corner of the window.

3. Uninstall "Get Windows 10"

If you are really serious about not wanting the "Get Windows 10" app on your device, you might want to permanently uninstall it. To do this, you will have to uninstall the update called KB3035583 that brought it in the first place.
Launch Control Panel, go to Programs and then click or tap on View installed updates.

In the Installed Updates window, look for the KB3035583 update. You can either scroll down until you see it, or you can use the Search field from the top right corner of the window.

Select the KB3035583 update with a click or a tap and then press the Uninstall button found at the top of the updates list.

Confirm that you want to uninstall this update and wait for the process to finish. Then, reboot your device.

Now, the "Get Windows 10" app is completely removed from your system. However, we are not done yet. If you never want to get it again, you'll also have to hide it from Windows Update, so that it doesn't get installed again on your device. You can find all the details on how to block an update in this guide we published a while ago: Check for Windows Updates, Learn What They Do & Block Those You Don't Need.
ALTERNATIVE: We have also discovered a desktop application which you can run and use to block the Windows 10 upgrade. You can learn how it works, here: 3 Steps to blocking the Windows 10 upgrade offer using Never10.

Conclusion

While many users are eager to get Windows 10, there are people who don't want to. For them, the new "Get Windows 10" app is just annoying, pure and simple. If you find yourself among them, now you know how to get rid of the app's icon and notification, or even how to permanently disable it. We hope that this guide proved useful to you, and if you want to share anything about the "Get Windows 10" app, don't hesitate to leave us a comment in the form below.