How to disable "We can't open this ms-gamebar link" pop-up

There has to be a way to disable this extremely annoying and unnecessary pop-up from a OS that no longer has all of that Xbox and MS Windows bloat. It is stupid that this thing pops up every single time I connect a controller, it is annoying. I tried some powershell commands I found from google, they do not work. "reinstall the xbox app" is not a fix. I do not want the Xbox bloat, I want the notification gone, that is it. Things like this is why more and more people are going to Linux nowadays

Since I've spent countless hours myself battling this problem, I thought I'd share what solved it for me. Credits to aveyo who wrote this script:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/vm046d/is_there_any_way_to_remove_the_xbox_game_bar/

If I understand correctly, the script redirects the three gaming-related protocol handlers:

powershell"ms-gamebar","ms-gamebarservices","ms-gamingoverlay"

It's not affecting any other file associations or protocols. For each of these three specific protocols, it:

1. Creates/modifies their registry entries under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
2. Adds a "NoOpenWith" flag
3. Points their "shell\open\command" to systray.exe

Hello, MOCCOR

Welcome to the Microsoft community.

Thank you for your feedback. I understand that you are experiencing problems with the game-bar pop-up, you can take a picture and send it to me, this will help me understand your problem. You can try the following:

Search for Powershell in the search bar, select Run as administrator and enter the following commands in order:

Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.XboxGamingOverlay | Remove-AppxPackage

reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\GameDVR /f /t REG_DWORD /v "AppCaptureEnabled" /d 0

reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\System\GameConfigStore /f /t REG_DWORD /v "GameDVR_Enabled" /d 0

This disables the game recorder software which seems to still think that the gaming overlay is still present.

Sorry for the hassle, but I'm just a support person, I'm not a Microsoft employee. If this still doesn't fix it, you can press Win+F to give feedback on this issue.

I hope my explanation makes sense and I look forward to your feedback.

Happy holidays and happy new year!!

Best Regards,

Aaron| Microsoft Community Support Specialist

Hello,

When you connect your controller to a Windows PC, the Xbox controller automatically tries to open the Gamebar app, you can't prevent that. Since you don't have the Gamebar app, it comes up with that.

It looks like you will have to either install Xbox and the Gamebar app on your computer (it doesn't take up that much space and it'll get rid of that prompt), or you'll have to unfortunately deal with that.

Hope this helps and Happy New Year.

I am hoping there is some kind of code or something in this OS that can fix it. It is idiotic of MS to implement it like that. It isn't about storage or memory consumption, I just don't want the services running since I do not use them whatsoever. I am not even surprised by MS if there is no "fix" for it, but I appreciate the info

It still pops up after trying the commands. It is especially annoying because there is limited space on the taskbar since MS no longer allows the "small" icons that W10 and other versions had. But it is mostly annoying due to being a waste of time of having to close something that shouldn't exist in the first place.

But I appreciate the recommendation to try.

Hello,

When you connect your controller to a Windows PC, the Xbox controller automatically tries to open the Gamebar app, you can't prevent that. Since you don't have the Gamebar app, it comes up with that.

It looks like you will have to either install Xbox and the Gamebar app on your computer (it doesn't take up that much space and it'll get rid of that prompt), or you'll have to unfortunately deal with that.

Hope this helps and Happy New Year.