In our previous guide titled how to enable or disable Settings and Control Panel in Windows 10, we talked about disabling or blocking the entire Settings app and Control Panel in Windows 10.
While disabling or blocking the Settings is an excellent way to prevent others from making changes to your PC, you might want to block or disable only specific pages instead of the entire Settings app. For instance, you might want to block or disable background, lock screen and themes pages to prevent others from changing your current desktop background, lock screen background, and desktop theme respectively.
Luckily, there is more than a way out there to block or disable specific pages in the Settings app. You can either use the Group Policy, Windows Registry or a third-party tool called Win 10 Settings Blocker to block specific pages of Settings app in Windows 10.
Method 1 of 3
Disable or block specific pages in the Settings app
This method uses Group Policy to block pages of the Settings app. Since Group Policy is not present in the Home edition, please refer to the Method 2 or 3 of this guide to know how to do the same with Windows Registry or a third-party tool.
Step 1: Open the Group Policy Editor by typing its name in the Start/taskbar search field and then hitting Enter.
Step 2: In the Local Group Policy window, navigate to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Control Panel. On the right side, look for Settings page visibility policy. Double-click on it to open its properties window.
Step 3: Select the Enabled option. In the Settings page visibility box, type the URL of the page that you would like to hide. You can find URL for all pages on this official page.
For instance, if you need to hide the Background page (Settings > Personalization > Background), you will need to type Hide:personalization-background.
If you want to hide multiple pages, use a semicolon (;) in between two URLs. For instance, to hide Background and Lock screen pages, we need to type hide:personalization-background;lockscreen in the Settings Page Visibility box and then click on the Apply button.
Method 2 of 3
Hide specific pages of Settings via Registry
Step 1: In the Start/taskbar search field, type Regedit and then hit the Enter key.
Step 2: Navigate to the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\ Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
Step 3: On the right side, right-click on an empty spot, click New, click String Value, and then name it as SettingsPageVisibility.
Step 4: Finally, double-click on SettingsPageVisibility and type the URL of the page that you would like to hide by prefixing “Hide:” (without quotes). You can find URLs for all pages on this page.
For instance, if you need to hide the Background page (Settings > Personalization > Background), you will need to type Hide:personalization-background.
To hide multiple pages, separate URLs with a semicolon (;). For instance, type hide:personalization-background;lockscreen in the value data box. Click OK.
Method 3 of 3
Hide Settings app pages using Settings Blocker
For those of you who are looking for an easy way, there is a third-party utility to block specific pages of Settings app. Win 10 Settings Blocker is a free tiny tool designed to help you block either the entire Settings app or specific pages of Settings app.
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