Disable the help stickers in Windows 8.1
One of the things that Microsoft has improved in terms of teaching users the new functionality of the Windows 8 operating system are tutorial arrows that the operating system displays to the user (Microsoft calls them help stickers).
These arrows highlight the new hidden bars, the Charms bar for example, so that you know how to access it and what it is for.
These arrow overlays are displayed in various situations and point to the Charms Bar, the apps switching interface in the top left corner, and the new start button in the lower left corner.
These tutorials have been designed to be displayed only once. You may however have noticed that they come up over and over again, which can be a frustrating experience, especially if you know how to handle those control elements.
Here is what is happening: unless you do what they state, e.g. move the mouse to the location and click, they are displayed over and over again until you do.
Disable the Help Stickers in Windows 8.1
The easiest way to solve the issue is to comply and follow the lead. When an arrow appears, do what it states and it won't show up anymore.
That's probably the easiest solution, unless you happen to install and configure the operating system on a lot of different computer systems. It is quite tedious to repeat the process on different systems.
There is help however in form of a Registry key that you can create to disable the help stickers. Here is what you need to do:
- Use Windows-R to bring up the run box on the system.
- Type regedit and hit the enter key afterwards.
- Use the sidebar to navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows
- Right-click on Windows and select New > Key from the context menu.
- Name the new key EdgeUI.
- Right-click the new EdgeUI key afterwards and select New > Dword (32-bit value).
- Name it DisableHelpSticker.
- Double-click the new Dword afterwards and change its value from 0 to 1.
- Restart the PC.
This disables the help sticker system so that they are not displayed anymore to you when you use the operating system.
Closing Words
The help stickers do not pop up every other second or so, which means that it is not the most annoying thing. If you do not want to click on each once to confirm that you know how to use the operating system, you may want to set the new Registry key to disable that feature. It is probably of more use to administrators who configure multiple systems. (via DeskModder)
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Does 8.1 offer anything to the user that doesn’t use the “Modern” interface? Like many others, I have Win8 setup to boot straight to the desktop and I have a start menu replacement program to fix that problem. I use programs rather than the apps, so about the only time I’m in the Modern interface is when I have to hunt through the multiple control panels to find the setting I’m looking for. Besides the lame attempt at bringing the start menu back, does 8.1 offer any advantages for me?
You won’t find that many desktop changes. Read up on that here:
https://www.ghacks.net/2013/09/10/major-changes-windows-8-1/
Just adding HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\EdgeUI didn’t work for me. I had to create HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\EdgeUI as well.