How to Turn Windows Features On or Off on Windows 10?

Windows 10 has many features, some of which we can be turned on or off as per our requirement. These are the “optional features” and they are available through the “Windows Features Dialog” available in the Control Panel.

Turning off any of the optional features doesn’t mean that they are completely removed from the device. These Software will continue to use the space on your hard disk drive. Depending upon your requirement, you can turn on or turn off these features. Many of these optional features are advanced, turning them off or on can put your device at risk or may slow down your device if you don’t know how to manage them correctly.

What are these Windows optional features

Windows have some features that we either don’t use and they are disabled by default or some of the features which are useful and they are enable by default. These features are optional and they could help with accessibility, productivity apps or hardware.

If we don’t use these features on Windows, we can turn on or off as needed and they’re available through the “Windows Feature” page in the Control Panel or we can use PowerShell.

There are some third-party software that can be use to manage the Windows features. But not every third-party software is good for our device. The biggest disadvantage is that these software consumes extra space. While installing third-party software, some unwanted software installed in your device automatically which can put your device and privacy at high risk. Apart from this, there are some paid software that give trail version in which we have to pay for licence.

However, in windows traditional methods,  we can use Control Panel which is a feature of the Windows operating system that allows the user to modify system settings and controls. Moreover, we have another method which is Windows PowerShell which is a cross-platform task automation and configuration management framework, consisting of a command-line shell and scripting language. Furthermore, we can use Windows Features applets it is used to turn optional Windows features on or off, or uninstall an installed program, view installed Windows Updates and to set default program accesses.

These methods are the preinstalled features of Windows neither they consume extra space as third party software does nor put our device’s privacy at risk(if you use them properly).

How to manage “Windows Optional Features” using Control  Panel

1. Type Control Panel on Search Bar

2. Click on Programs

3. Click on Turn Windows features On or Off

4. On Windows features dialog, Check or Uncheck the features as per your requirement.

5. Click OK to turn on or off the feature(Restart your device to complete the task).

How to manage “Windows Optional Features” using 

PowerShell

1. Right click on Start Button or press Window key + x

2. Open PowerShell as Administrator

3. Type or copy-paste the following command: (Get-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online)

4. Write the name of the features as you want to enable or disable

 

5. To enable any optional feature, type the following command: ( Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature –FeatureName "name" -All -Online)

6. To disable any optional features, type the following command: (Disable-WindowsOptionalFeature –FeatureName "name" -Online) 

7. If restart required type Y and hit enter key(if required) Some of the optional features that can be turn      on or off.