Microsoft 'gives in' to users, allows turning off AI Actions on Windows 11

Microsoft only added the AI ​​Actions feature to Windows 11's right-click menu in May, but after a short time, the company had to comply with community requests: allowing this feature to be completely disabled in the latest Windows 11 build 26220.7344.

One user on Reddit found in the release notes that: 'If no AI Actions are available or enabled, this item will no longer appear in the right-click menu.' Alternatively, users can remove all AI Actions at once by going to Settings > Apps > Actions and deselecting related apps like Paint, Photos, or Teams.

Previously, even with these options turned off, AI Actions remained in the right-click menu, albeit empty—taking up useless space in an already cluttered menu. When right-clicking an image, AI Actions allowed for quick actions like Visual Search with Bing , Blur background , Erase object , or Remove background with Paint or Photos. Those who needed it found it convenient, but those who didn't like it can now remove it entirely.

AI Actions are criticized as… redundant

One of the reasons why users complain is that AI Actions are actually just shortcuts to open other apps . These actions can be done by simply going to the 'Open With' option and selecting the desired app.

Screenshots from Neowin from May also show that the AI ​​Actions menu contains items like Edit with Paint or Edit with Photos , meaning options that are already available elsewhere.

Also in that image, the right-click menu has up to 18 items , not including the action row above and the Show more options option . Meanwhile, on Fedora Xfce, when right-clicking on an image, there are only about 10 items . Microsoft is clearly 'overdoing it' with the number of options, so it's understandable that users want to clean it up.

The new build also brings some other notable improvements:

1. Combine options like Compress to. , Copy as path into one Manage file menu to avoid confusion.
2. Collect all OneDrive-related options into a single section.

Overall, Microsoft is trying to streamline the right-click menu, while giving users more control instead of imposing AI features on the interface.

Marvin Fry

Update 08 December 2025