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From time to time I get this notification from Windows 11:

Notification Suggestion

If I want to turn it off (by clicking on ...), the option is gray:

Notification Suggestion after clicking ...

So, how to turn it off?

The following settings are turned off under my System > Notifications > Additional settings:

  • Show the Windows welcome experience after updates and when signed in to show what's new and suggested
  • Suggest ways to get the most out of Windows and finish setting up this device
  • Get tips and suggestions when using Windows
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    Since this has 12 up-votes so far, and no answer or (other) comment, I'd guess this is a bug in Windows 11, and might be reported as such to MS.
    – DrMoishe Pippik
    Commented Mar 12 at 19:45

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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The Windows Push Notifications User Service refers to this functionality as SmartOptOut.

Current status: I have disabled this notification in the registry on three computers on 2024-03-15 and I haven't seen any Notification Suggestions since. I will update this answer if that changes.

Recommended: disable notification in registry

It is possible to "Turn off all notifications for Notification Suggestions" with this registry change:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Notifications\Settings\Windows.ActionCenter.SmartOptOut]
"Enabled"=dword:00000000

Alternative 1: allow notifications to be disabled in UI

Alternatively, if you want to disable it through the Settings app GUI, you can set the following value. However, this is a more circuitous path that doesn't work any better, it's just a different route to the same state as the recommended change above.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AppUserModelId\Windows.ActionCenter.SmartOptOut]
"ShowInSettings"=dword:00000001

Then go to Settings > System > Notifications, and under "Notifications from apps and other senders," turn "Notification Suggestions" off.

turned off in Settings list

turned off in Settings

You could also wait for the "We noticed you haven't opened these in a while" notification to appear again and click "Turn off all notifications for Notification Suggestions" in the … menu (which will no longer be disabled as it was in the question's screenshot):

turn off enabled in toast

However, this key is only writable by the TrustedInstaller user, so you have to give yourself permissions to write to it, or run regedit.exe as TrustedInstaller (for example, using WinAero Tweaker, ExecTi, or PsExec).

Alternative 2: slow down timer

You can modify the frequency at which SmartOptOut runs, so you may be able to make it run so infrequently that it practically never runs. I have used this to make it run faster for testing, so slower should work too.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Notifications\SmartOptOut]
"InitialTimerCooldown"=hex(b):ff,ff,ff,ff,ff,ff,ff,ff
"PeriodicTimerCooldown"=hex(b):ff,ff,ff,ff,ff,ff,ff,ff

These changes set the interval between the WpnUserService starting and the first SmartOptOut check, and the interval between subsequent checks, to the maximum 64-bit unsigned long value. This seems to be interpreted as a duration in seconds, which equates to about 585 billion years.

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  • Do you know which component is responsible for this? Is there a way to uninstall it fully?
    – Igor Levicki
    Commented Apr 7 at 11:03
  • The component responsible for SmartOptOut is the Windows Push Notifications User Service (WpnUserService_*). If you stop this service, it will get restarted when you open the calendar & notifications panel (Win+N). I don't know what will happen if you disable this service, you might not get any notifications from any apps.
    – Ben Hutchison
    Commented Apr 7 at 13:32
  • Does HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Notifications\Settings\Windows.SystemToast.Suggested key of Enabled to DWORD 0 seem like logical addition for disabling?
    – PotatoFarmer
    Commented May 9 at 17:38
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    It looks like Windows.SystemToast.Suggested controls the Suggested notifications (ads for Microsoft stuff like OneDrive, Phone Link, M365, Bing, device trade-in, hardware), and can be disabled in the GUI without any manual Registry changes. The question here is about Windows.ActionCenter.SmartOptOut which controls Notification Suggestions (disabling other unused notifications). So while they're separate categories and unrelated to each other, I agree that it's the best user experience to have both disabled because they're both annoying and unhelpful. I personally disabled both.
    – Ben Hutchison
    Commented May 9 at 19:09
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After some digging through relevant Microsoft documentation, for those who don't care about notifications at all, there's another way of fully disabling the root cause of this behavior:

REG.EXE ADD HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\WpnUserService /v Start /t REG_DWORD /d 4 /f
REG.EXE ADD HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\WpnUserService /v UserServiceFlag /t REG_DWORD /d 4 /f

Start value of 0 will disable the hidden service template which cannot be edited using services.msc, and the UserServiceFlag value of 0 will prevent the creation of per-user service (the one named WpnUserService_*).

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    This turns off all notifications! There is an easier way, and without hacking: go to Windows Settings > System > Notifications, and turn off Notifications. But, if someone aims to turn off all notifications, they wouldn't search for my question on the internet, but rather they would search directly in Windows Settings. So, I think your answer is not really answering the question.
    – Dr. Gut
    Commented Apr 10 at 14:13
  • @Dr.Gut Just disabling notifications from Settings is something anyone can do when they boot into Windows after installation. If you try doing that yourself you will notice that it doesn't actually disable any Windows services which means it doesn't save you any resources -- it just disables GUI. Perhaps I should have clarified that my method is meant to be applied during install image customization but I just assumed that people who do that kind of thing will understand.
    – Igor Levicki
    Commented Apr 16 at 19:16
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    Much as I love disabling services, if someone customizing an OS image is worried about freeing system resources, disabling WpnUserService isn't an effective way to do it. It takes 0% CPU, 0.03% of my RAM, and doesn't contribute to boot time. Moreover, disabling this service is an answer to a different question than the one asked, regardless of what some hypothetical, unrelated audience would or would not understand.
    – Ben Hutchison
    Commented May 2 at 6:35
  • @BenHutchison It's not a matter of "optimization" -- it's a matter of security hardening (check Microsoft's own recommendations for Windows Server to learn which services aren't considered essential). By having less running services you are reducing not just CPU usage and RAM footprint but also the potential attack surface. And who are you to judge whether someone should or shouldn't be interested in fully disabling application notifications? Shouldn't that be on others to decide?
    – Igor Levicki
    Commented May 2 at 16:25

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