Turn Off Windows Mobility Center using Intune or GPO
In this post, I will show you how you can turn off Windows Mobility center using Intune or GPO. You can use any of these methods to disable the Windows Mobility Center on your computers.
There are multiple methods that you can use to turn off the Windows Mobility Center on Windows laptops.
For example, you can use group policy to turn off Windows Mobility Center on domain joined computers. This is the best option if your Windows computers are joined to Active Directory domain.
If you are using Mobile Device Management solution such as Intune, you can use the Settings Catalog to turn off Windows Mobility Center on Windows 10 and Windows 11 computers.
I will be covering both the methods in this post. Before we look at those methods, let’s understand what is Windows Mobility Center and what is the use of Mobility Center.
What is Windows Mobility Center?
Windows Mobility Center is a component of Windows Operating system that gives users quick access to the most common mobile features.
The Windows Mobility Center in Windows 10 and 11 includes the following components:
- Brightness Adjustment – Allows you to adjust the display brightness.
- Volume– An option to adjust the volume and mute on your laptop.
- Battery Status – Displays the current battery status along with current Power Plan.
- Wireless Network -Shows the wireless information.
- Screen Orientation – Shows the current display option – Landscape or Portrait. Allows you to change the screen orientation using Rotate Screen option.
- External Display – Display and connect an external monitor.
- Sync Centre – Adjust Sync settings.
- Presentation Settings – Connect to a projector.
If Windows Mobility Center is useful, then why disable it? Some time back, few corporate users started to complain that Windows Mobility Center popped up frequently at work.
The issue was observed on Dell laptops and probably a bad update could be the reason for this issue. Although the mobility center is not used by many laptop users, it was safe to disable it.
Turning off the access to Windows Mobility Center should have no impact on the user’s laptop.
How To launch the Windows Mobility Center?
To launch the Windows Mobility Center on Windows 10 / Windows 11:
- Press the
Windows Key+Xshortcut key to open the Power User Tasks Menu. - Select Mobility Center.
The shortcut command to open Windows Mobility Center is mblctr.exe.
Important: Desktop computers don’t have Windows Mobility Center component. Only laptops come with Windows Mobility Center component.
Turn off Windows Mobility Center using Intune
To turn off Windows Mobility Center using Intune, you can follow the below steps.
- First, sign in to the Microsoft Endpoint Manager admin center.
- Go to Devices > Windows > Configuration Profiles.
- To create a new profile, select Create Profile.
On Create a profile screen, select the Platform as Windows 10 and later. Select Profile Type as Settings Catalog. Click Create.
On the Basics tab, enter the name of the Intune Configuration Profile as “Turn off Windows Mobility Center” or “Disable Windows Mobility Center“.
Add a brief description about what this policy is all about. Click Next.
On the Configuration Settings tab, you see the Settings Catalog. With the settings catalog, you can choose which settings you want to configure.
To add new settings, click Add Settings.
On the Settings Picker window, type “Windows Mobility Center” in the search box and click Search.
From the search results, select Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Mobility Center and under Setting name, select Turn Off Windows Mobility Center.
For the setting, set the Turn off Windows Mobility Center to Enabled. This will turn off the access to Windows Mobility Center on laptops. Click Next.
On the Assignments tab, include the groups to which you want to target this policy. Click Next.
You may select scope tags, but this is completely optional. Click Next to continue.
On the Review+Create tab, review the policy settings and click Create.
Shortly, a notification will appear automatically in the top right-hand corner with a message. Policy Created: Policy Turn off Windows Mobility Center created successfully.
The policy also appears in the list of Configuration Profiles in MEM portal.
The devices that were part of assignments will get the policy settings once they check in with the Intune service.
You can select the profile and view the report under Device and user check-in status. The succeeded status shows the count of devices that successfully got the policy.
You can verify if the Windows Mobility Center is disabled on Windows 10/Windows 11 laptops. Log in to Windows 10 or Windows 11 laptops. The Mobility Center option may appear on Power User task menu, clicking the option will not launch mobility center.
Turn Off Windows Mobility Center using GPO
In this method, we will use a Group Policy (GPO) to turn off Windows Mobility Center on domain joined computers.
The GPO should work on laptops running Windows 10 and Windows 11 OS.
I assume your account has permissions to create a GPO. You can create a new GPO by logging in to a domain controller or a Windows Server that has GPMC installed.
Launch the Group Policy Management console and expand Domains > Group Policy Objects. Right-click Group Policy Objects and select New.
On the New GPO window, specify the GPO name as Turn off Windows Mobility Center and click OK.
Right click the GPO and select Edit. In the Group Policy Management Editor, navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components >Windows Mobility Center.
In the right pane, right click Turn off Windows Mobility Center GPO setting and select Edit.
The group policy setting Turn off Windows Mobility Center turns off Windows Mobility Center. If you enable this policy setting, the user is unable to invoke Windows Mobility Center. The Windows Mobility Center UI is removed from all shell entry points and the .exe file does not launch it.
If you disable this policy setting, the user can invoke Windows Mobility Center and the .exe file launches it. If you do not configure this policy setting, Windows Mobility Center is on by default.
Select Enabled and click Apply and OK.
In the next step, ensure you select the GPO and link it to the right OU. If you have already tested this GPO, and you want to apply this GPO to entire domain, you can do so.
After you apply the GPO, wait for GP refresh interval (default 90 minutes). Once the group policy is applied to the computers, you can verify the access to Windows Mobility Center by manually launching it.
Need more help?
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