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Every so often I'll notice my laptop fans kick into high gear for apparently no reason and my keyboard starts responding slowly.

Then I fire up Task Manager and see this...
Photos and Runtime Broker

Photo Runtime Broker

I've turned all the settings off within the Photos app.

Photos app settings

But it still insists on doing something behind the scenes.

How do I stop this from happening?

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2
  • Does it run in background? Take some time and see if the CPU usage automatically drops.
    – Biswapriyo
    Commented Feb 9, 2018 at 3:47
  • Yes. It does run in the background and it automatically drops. I want to stop it from ever starting.
    – GollyJer
    Commented Feb 9, 2018 at 15:53

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
10

One way that might or might not work is to deactivate it from running in the background. Press Win + I, then go to Privacy, then to Background Apps. Switch off Photos.

Or, if you want to be a bit more drastic, you could simply remove the photo-app - this works and does not harm the system (though of course, you would need another viewer/organiser for your pictures).

Just fire up a PowerShell-Terminal as Administrator and type:

Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers "*Photos*" | Remove-AppxPackage -Verbose

Derived from my very own remove_win10_apps.ps1.

Further reading: Remove appx package for all users

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3
  • Thanks flolilolilo. That will work I'm sure. Today I decided to remove all the linked folders (even those with no photos like the local Pictures folder) to see how that works. I'll keep an eye on it. Hopefully it's a less nuclear solution. I love your full remove_win10_apps.ps1. script by the way. Nice work!
    – GollyJer
    Commented Feb 21, 2018 at 21:35
  • @GollyJer Thanks - it really was just a matter of stitching together the information from various places in the fastest way possible. ;-)
    – flolilo
    Commented Feb 21, 2018 at 22:25
  • You have to deactivate Photos from running in the background individually for all users on a PC. My wife's Photos process was still hammering the CPU even though I disabled it for me. Hopefully it's finally resolved.
    – xhafan
    Commented Dec 7, 2022 at 7:29

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