On Copilot+ PCs, Windows offers to act on whatever is on your screen - summarise it, rewrite it, search the web for it. That is Click to Do, and beside it sits a smarter search. Both have settings pages. Here is what they do before you decide.
If you bought a regular Windows 11 PC, this page ends quickly: Click to Do and the improved AI search exist only on Copilot+ PCs, and the settings pages below will not appear on your machine. On a Copilot+ PC they are the ambient layer of Windows AI - not an app you open, but assistance offered over whatever is already on screen. That design is exactly why some users love them and others want them off. Both reactions are fine; both features have proper settings switches, and this page shows where they live and grades what switching them off really changes.
Click to Do watches for a deliberate gesture from you - a shortcut or the Click to Do entry point - then analyses what is on screen and offers actions on it: summarise this text, rewrite it, look up this image, draft a reply to this email. Microsoft built it as Recall's helpful sibling: same screen-awareness idea, but invoked by you on demand rather than recording continuously. It runs its analysis on the device's NPU. Honest grading up front: it is a feature that waits for your command, not a background recorder - which separates it from Recall in the one way that matters most.
On a Copilot+ PC, open Settings > Privacy & security > Click to Do and switch it off. That is the whole job - no policy, no registry. With it off, the gesture stops offering actions and the surface disappears from daily use. Because the setting lives under Privacy & security rather than Apps, many owners never find it and conclude the feature is compulsory; it is not. If the page is missing from your Settings, your PC is not a Copilot+ model and Click to Do was never present to remove.
Copilot+ PCs add semantic search to Windows Search: the index understands meaning, so "the invoice from last Friday" can find a file whose name never says invoice. Microsoft describes this indexing and processing as happening on the device, using the NPU, rather than shipping your files to the cloud for understanding. You manage it from the Search settings (search permissions and indexing options), and excluding folders from indexing excludes them from the smart layer too. Grade it honestly: this is the Copilot+ extra with the best convenience-to-intrusion ratio for most people - and still entirely optional to use, since classic keyword search keeps working.
Windows 11 lets apps register actions that other features can offer - summarise with this app, edit with that one. Review them under Settings > Apps > Actions, where each app's actions can be switched off individually. This page is the least-known control in the whole AI stack and the one that keeps third-party AI features from surfacing inside Windows itself. Ten seconds here during your cleanup prevents the situation where you disabled Microsoft's surfaces but a newly installed app quietly adds its own back.
Everything that made the PC useful yesterday. Normal file search by name and content still works - it is the older indexer, not the AI layer. Your apps open, your files sit where they were, Recall (if you use it) is controlled on its own page, and Copilot the app is an entirely separate decision covered elsewhere in this series. Turning off Click to Do and semantic search removes offers of help, not capability. Users who disable the whole Copilot+ layer report the machine simply feels like Windows 11 did before - which is, of course, the point.
Plenty of Copilot+ owners keep exactly one of these: semantic search on (it finds their files uncannily well), Click to Do off (the pop-up offers annoyed them). There is no virtue score for disabling the maximum - the features have individual switches precisely because the right answer differs per person. Decide per feature, write the decision in your settings note, and revisit after the next feature update, when Microsoft occasionally adds a new surface with its own page in the same Privacy & security neighbourhood.
Every step shown live on a real Windows 11 PC - which AI features go, which stay, and the honest limits of removing them.
▶️ Watch Full VideoBecause Click to Do is a Copilot+ PC feature. It needs the NPU hardware those machines carry for on-device AI. A regular Windows 11 PC - even a powerful gaming one with a big graphics card - does not include the feature or its settings page. Nothing is broken; there is simply nothing to turn off.
Microsoft describes the semantic indexing on Copilot+ PCs as on-device processing using the NPU - your files are indexed locally so the meaning-based search can work. Ordinary Windows Search cloud options (like searching the web from the taskbar box) are separate settings under Search permissions and can be switched off independently if you prefer a purely local search box.
No - they are independent features with independent settings pages, despite the family resemblance. Recall saves snapshots over time (and only after you opt in); Click to Do acts once, when invoked, on what is on screen. Turning off one leaves the other's state untouched, so check both pages during your cleanup.