How to Disable the Hot Corners

How to Disable the Hot Corners

 
By default, all four corners of the screen in Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 trigger certain actions. Moving to the lower-left corner displays the Start button, while moving to the upper-left corner shows you the app switcher, with thumbnails for all open apps. And the upper-right and lower-right corners conjure up the Charms bar.

Ever find yourself accidentally triggering some of those hot corners, or simply prefer not to use them? No problem. In Windows 8.1, you can easily put the kibosh on two of them.

From the Start screen, launch the Charms bar, click on the Settings charm, and select the link to "Change PC settings." From the PC settings screen, select the "PC & devices" option and then select "Corners & edges." In the "Corner navigation" section, the first setting is named "When I point to the upper-right corner, show Search, Share, Start, Devices, and Settings." Turn off that long-winded setting. Now, when you move to the upper-right corner of the screen, the Charms bar no longer pops up.

The second setting to tweak is named "When I click the upper-left corner, switch between my recent apps." Turn that one off, and now you can move to the upper-left corner without triggering the app switcher.

Making these changes disables these hot corners, but it doesn't kill the features themselves. You can still launch the Charms bar by hovering over the lower-right corner of the screen or by pressing Win+C. And you can continue to display the app switcher by hovering over the Start button and moving up to the top of the screen.