The lock screen, sadly, is not much better. Block Tips and Suggestions From the Lock Screen Or you can right-click on it to choose Uninstall to remove the app entirely. That way, it will merely act as a shortcut to the app. If you have a problem with any of the live tiles that Windows has stuck on your Start screen-some of which are pre-installed junk or trials-you can right-click on the one that's bugging you, hover over More option, and choose Turn Live Tile Off.

You can turn these off if you open Settings > Personalization > Start and untick the Show Suggestions Occasionally in Start option. If you use Chrome, for example, your Start menu may badger you to switch to the new Edge.

The Start menu has gone through a lot of changes in Windows 10, but if pre-installed games and other live tile clutter wasn't enough to annoy you, Microsoft has now started including 'suggestions' to lure you over to its own apps. The steps below may not remove everything, but should tone things down to some extent. Microsoft has a history of bringing ads to new places (how about in the Windows 11 Start menu and your Xbox games?) and restoring 'suggested' apps that have already been removed with Windows updates, so you may have to go back from time to time to make sure everything is still how you want it. (The same goes for the ads in Windows 11). Thankfully, most of these ads have simple toggles to turn them off within the Windows 10 settings menu. You're better off doing it yourself, so you know what to go back and tweak later if something goes wonky.

How to get rid of windows pop up ads