Long post to remove AI bloat from Windows/Firefox and ads and such, made it mostly 4 myself so if it's messy looking you know why
First off all, switch to linux if you can
Win11 Debloater
A powershell script to delete all the bullshit microsoft pushes in each update, like preinstalled a(d)pps or AI features or trackings. Just open powershell as admin and paste this line
& ([scriptblock]::Create((irm "https://debloat.raphi.re/")))
I personally suggest you go for option 2, custom mode, so that you can remove even more stuff manually, for example once you downloaded a non-chromium based browser you can delete Edge, and Notepad so you can switch for Notepads, cleaner and better looking version of the notepad with no ai inspiration mode or whatev, or you could try Notepad++
but you can do whatev anyway, if you change your mind you can always run the script again and choose a different option
You probably want a local account instead of having your computer forcibly tied to a microsoft account, to avoid being forced to make an account, during the setup click on set up for work or school when prompted, then on sign-in options, then domain-join instead and it should be done
But this method does not work for Home edition, so here's another method (I haven't seen if it works for myself), when setting everything up click Shift + f10 and write start ms-cxh:localonly and it should let you continue without intrusive ads/features being promoted all the time, if it doesn't work try entering oobe\bypassnro onto the command prompt instead, and make sure you are offline, the computer should not detect any connection, so unplug your ethernet or make your pc forget your wifi or turn your modem off
Now, for some reason the power off button on your computer might be taking a break instead of going home, as in putting your pc on standby instead of actually shutting it down, to make sure it shuts your pc down you need to go to Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options > click on the text on the upper left that says Choose what the power buttons do > set When I press the Power Button to Shut down > click on the blue text at the top that says Change settings that are currently unavailable and untick Turn on fast startup- MAKE SURE TO CLICK ON SAVE CHANGES AT THE BOTTOM BTW <:3 <- forgor to do that twice
To check if this problem is still accouring you need to open the Task Manager by pressing ctrl + shift + esc or right clicking the taskbar at the bottom of the screen (if you keep it in that position) and selecting Task Manager, now click on Performance and click on CPU, at the bottom you should see the up time with how much time the computer has been powered on for, if the number seems suspiciously high, like 83 hours (and you haven't kept it on for 83 or so hours) then your computer is not actually shutting down when it's supposed to!
For some additional options you can download O&O ShutUp10++, this program will let you disable some other intrusive options/telemetry and data being sent to microsoft behind the courtain: first off (this is a useful thing to remember in general, it's time travel!) make a restore point by typying "create a restore point" and then on the bottom click on create and give it a name, this will let you revert changes that you made to your pc with your last backup if need be (to do so click the button that says "system restore" , click next, and choose your backup restore point, click on next again and finish) Now open O&O ShutUp10++ I suggest you check each tab and setting by yourself to see what settings you prefer turning on or off, but as a rule of thumb you can also just click on actions in the upper right and then apply only reccomended settings, do this both for the current user and the local machine, and lastly check the copilot tab; it should show you a screen like this one, but if it doesn't go ahead and click on disable, remove and securely erase
Foobar2000 - You should archive your music and get an extremely customizable audio player ready imo
Revolt/Matrix - Eventually discord will drown in its own shit, so here's some alternatives
Mediahuman - Fave youtube to mp3 downloader app, it can mass download playlist and adds embeds too
Emulators - The emugen wiki has GREAT and LOADS info for emulating specific consoles, and links to archives of abandoned projects or forks, like for yuzu or ryujinx. extremely handy when the switch emulators trying to catch up to these two are already getting shut down before they can get to half of the compatibility list T-T
Disable windows updates - This will disable windows updates for 20 years or so, after the win11 24H2 updates whiped some hard disks I'm scared to update willy nilly
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Search Engines:
Starpage
DuckDuckGo
If you choose duckduckgo then go to the settings icon > All search settings > switch Hide AI-Generated images to ON
Then still in the settings go to the AI Features tab and switch Duck.ai OFF > Set search assist to Never > and make sure to click Save and Exit
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Email providers:
Protonmail
Tutamail (do not send a lot of emails at once, they'll delete your whole account in a jiff because it'll be detected as spam)
Startmail (paid)
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Browsers: for the love of god don't use chromium based browsers pls
Firefox
Librewolf
Waterfox
Tor
Firefox is no stranger to dumbass decisions, it mostly extends to being horrible at talking to its users, but they are experimenting with AI chatbots because that's the current hot and cool investor buzzword, like a clicker for your way too rich sub, but they still haven't implemented the killswitch that they said would come asap, so to disable this go to a new tab and type about:config then accept the risks and continue, then set all of these to false one by one (but at this point I suggest going with a fork like Librewolf or Waterfox and doing the steps over there)
With Firefox 148 they have introduced a kill switch at last, meaning a few clicks will disable all AI features, to do this go to settings then click on AI controls and then flip on the switch that says Block AI enhancements. I'll still leave this list down below just in case some other firefox based browsers don't have a kill switch or mozilla tries to sneak something out of it
browser.ml.enable
browser.ml.chat.enabled
browser.ml.chat.sidebar
browser.ml.chat.menu
browser.ml.chat.page
browser.ml.chat.shortcuts
browser.ml.chat.page.footerBadge
browser.ml.chat.page.menuBadge
extensions.ml.enabled
browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled
browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled
browser.tabs.groups.smart.userEnabled
sidebar.revamp
pdfjs.enableAltTextModelDownload
pdfjs.enableGuessAltText
browser.ml.pageAssist.enabled
browser.ml.modelHubRootUrl (set this one to "" so that it'll say blank)
Even if they might not popup for you, make sure to disable these since they'll still suck your CPU's power for nothing like it's opera or chrome all over again, other browsers are implementing this but at least Firefox lets you disable it manually
Then make sure to go onto the settings by typing about:preferences in a new tab (or clicking the hamburger menu on the upper right and clicking settings), and customize everything to your liking like the privacy settings for security, but make sure to type sponsors in the search tab and disable the sponsor shortcuts since they will add ads onto your pinned tabs
Make sure to right click just below the new tab (near the search bar) and select Customize Toolbar so you can mix it up to your liking, then check for themes by going to about:addons and clicking on Themes or you can check them out in the addon site, you can also access the addons section via the settings by clicking onto Extensions & Themes
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Addons:
Ublock Origin
essential to navigate the web nowadays bc of all the ads and bloat, I've put my list of filters in the drive link, go to options > my filters and then click on import, it's mostly stuff to disable/hide AI bullshit and adblocking in general, but check for yourself the grey text after the exclamation point if there's something you'd want to tweak in the filters
Behind The Overlay
removes popups that block the screen in certain sites, like login screens on articles and such
BlockTube
blocks videos and channels from popping up on youtube, go to option and import the file I've added to the drive. Again check for yourself via the Channel ID tab if there's channels you do care about, but it's mostly blocking AI channels
ClearURLs
Removes trackings for sites that put trackings in their urls
Dashboard Plus
If you're using tumblr on desktop you'll probably need this, makes the site less cluster fucky
Decentraleyes
Disables trackings + ads blocker
Don't track me Google
Removes trackers from google search links
Facebook Container
Isolates your facebook identity so that they have a harder time tracking you via third party cookies
I don't care about cookies
Removes cookies warnings so you don't have to click throught 4 screens to just tell them to fuck off
I still don't care about cookies
community version of the previous addon
Indie Wiki Buddy
Redirects you to independent wikis instead of dogshit fandom wikia full of bloated messes, joke entries or straight up lies, if there isn't an independent wiki then it will let you see the wiki via BreezeWiki to remove the clutter on the wiki page
Reddit Untranslate
I have a filter for this in the ublock list but the posts still get translated when looking them up on a search engine, so this addon fixes that
Return Youtube Dislike
Hey remember when youtube removed the ability to view the number of dislikes to make whiny ass multimillion companies happy by hiding the reception to their vids/if they did disable dislikes? Let's revert that pretty pls
Right-Click Borescope
Some sites won't let you open images onto other tabs, this addon helps you do that
Save webP as PNG or JPEG
Will help you convert files onto more common formats, like say from webP onto png, jpeg or gifs
SponsorBlock
Community effort ran addon, like as in the users indicate sponsor segments and based on your options you can skip them or skip intermissions and such
SteamDB
Steam is regionlocking review scores, technically you could disable this feature by going to your language preferences, but it doesn't work for me, I contacted steam support and they said they'll look into it (they won't) and to post this issue on the discussion thread (yeah fuck that cesspool), which just got dogpiled with people blaming chinese users for reviewbombs, whatev... it should be obvious how much this hurts everyone involved, especially indie devs, anglophones r the least affected so nobody ever brought it up except bellular news once or twice, so If you got this bug too then I suggest you use SteamDB so you can hover over the % of review score to see the actual numbers. SteamDB is a good site in general but I'm reccomending the addon just for this problem specifically
FireShot
Lets you take long page scrolling screenshots, like if you want to screenshot the full "do you love the color of the sky" post you could do that
TTV PRO LOL
Removes ads from twitch when possible, it usually just puts a screen that covers them, still better than seeing ads
TubeMod
Helps you customize the YouTube interface
TWP - Translate Web Pages
Handy translator, I often use it by highlighting a portion of text, right clicking and translating
uBlacklist
Blocks websites from popping up, you can press a button to make them show up again just in case you need it, TO MAKE IT WORK ON IMAGE SEARCH YOU MUST GO TO OPTIONS > SERPINFO > ADD AND ADD YOUR SEARCH ENGINE. In the drive I've added the list of sites I've blocked (around 2500 and most are AI sites), just go to options > import and import the txt as usual
Video DownloadHelper
It'll let you download videos from most sites if they don't let you right click and save them to your pc, for youtube it gives a bigass watermark so not worth using it there
Wayback Machine
Useful for looking at previous archived version of some sites, and to archive sites yourself
Wikipedia Vector Skin
Wikipedia changed its interfacein 2025, it kinda sucks imo, with this you can revert it to how it was before
YouTube Anti Translate
Youtube automatically translates text in other languages, it suuuuuuucks!!! this reverts the texts to their original languages, also disables the dogshit autodubbing
YouTube NonStop
Disables the "Are you still watching?" popup, useful with playlists for music ig
Youtube-shorts block
Disables the sin that is shorts so that you may watch the video you wanted like it's a normal video
Securely store, share, and access your important files and photos. Anytime, anywhere.
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Discord:
The current state of discord ui is horrible imo, consider (AFTER LOOKING AT THE RISKS) using vencord and aliucord with its load of great user-made plugins and themes full of quality of life and features that discord should have by default, the ones I reccomend for vencord are:
oldstyle theme
better upload button
favorite gif search
fake nitro
bigger stream preview
clearurls
always expand roles
account panel server profile
better gif alt text
fix spotify embeds
fix images quality
fix youtube embeds
ilovespam
implicit relationships
image zoom
message logger
no reply mention
no typing animation
petpet
no unblock to jump
preview message
replace google search
relationship notifier
serverinfo
unlocked avatar zoom
spotify crack
usermessagespronouns
validreply
vcnarrator
validuser
viewicons
voicechatdoubleclick
voice messages
voicedownload
who reacted
and for aliucord I reccomend these:
who reacted
viewprofileimages
userdetails
timezones
square avatars
splitmessages
pronoundb
mediapickerpatchers
custom timestamps
copyfilelink
calltime
betterstatusindicator
audioplayer
attachmentpickersizes
also in vencord go to options > themes > edit quickcss and add this line
@import url("https://croissantdunord.github.io/discord-adblock/adblock.css");
it should block nitro ads and popups
and add this one too
nav[class*=privateChannels] :is(
a[href="/quest-home"],
a[href="/shop"],
a[href="/store"]
) {
display: none;
}
if you want to get rid of the Quest tab, since they are just glorified ads, not worth paying for or sitting though daily ads like they are gacha weeklies
Vencord will stop functioning once in a while so if you boot discord up and see the horrible popups and store tab, and nitro and all that bloat, head back to the site, click download vencord, choose your option based on your operating system, in my case it's Windows so I click on Download VencordInstaller.exe, open it up and click on Reinstall/Repair, open discord again and it should work as intended
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Extra
Instead of google's authenticator with the icon that looks like a butthole, use Ente Auth
Try magic earth and openstreetmaps instead of google maps
If you're on android consider changing your operating system to grapheneos
The context menu for windows 11 has been compressed and it sucks to have less options, or having to expanding it each time, to restore the legacy right click menu open the terminal and type reg.exe add "HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32" /f /ve
The file explorer kinda sucks too, way too little options and basic features are hidden behind three layers of submenus, to restore the legacy file explorer go to this guide and head to option three, download the regedit file and run it, then you can delete the file
Both of these legacy restorations will need you to restart your computer or the explorer process to see the results, to restart the explorer process press ctrl + shift + esc, or just right click on the task bar and open the task manager, then type "explorer" in the search tab on top and click on the process called "Windows Explorer" with a folder icon representing it, right click and click on restart, after some seconds it should be done and you can check if the legacy right click menu and/or file explorer have been restored
Uninstalling programs has become a bigger hassle than usual because now windows will try to redirect you to the uninstall tab in the new rounded, compact and limited settings app, this means that way more steps are needed to reach the programs uninstall tab found in the control panel. My workaround is this: right click on the desktop, create a shortcut, and type Appwiz.cpl, when prompted to type the location of the item, then click next and write a name for this new shortcut, after doing so click on finish, and you'll have a desktop icon that works as a shortcut to uninstalling programs via the control panel uninstall tab
