How to Turn On or Off Online Services for Narrator in Windows 10


Narrator is a screen-reading app built into Windows 10. Narrator lets you use your PC without a display or mouse to complete common tasks if you’re blind or have low vision. It reads and interacts with things on the screen, like text and buttons. Use Narrator to read and write email, browse the internet, and work with documents.

Starting with Windows 10 build 18912, Narrator can now tell you the title of the page that’s linked to—just press Caps+Ctrl+D, and Narrator will take the URL of the hyperlink you are on and send it to an online service that will provide the page title to Narrator.

Online services is turned on for Narrator by default to improve your user experience by getting image descriptions, popular links and page titles.

If you would like to disable all online service usage by Narrator, you can turn this off in Narrator Settings.

This tutorial will show you how to turn on or off letting Narrator use online services for your account in Windows 10.


 CONTENTS:

  • Option One: Turn On or Off Online Services for Narrator in Settings
  • Option Two: Turn On or Off Online Services for Narrator using a REG file





OPTION ONE

To Turn On or Off Online Services for Narrator in Settings


1. Open Settings, and click/tap on the Ease of Access icon.

You can also press the Win+Ctrl+N keys to directly open Narrator settings.

2. Click/tap on Narrator on the left side, and turn on (default) or off Use online services for what you want on the right side. (see screenshot below)

3. You can now close Settings if you like.

Turn On or Off Online Services for Narrator in Windows 10-narrator_online_services.jpg






OPTION TWO

Turn On or Off Online Services for Narrator using a REG file



The downloadable .reg files below will modify the DWORD value in the registry key below.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Narrator\NoRoam

OnlineServicesEnabled DWORD

0 = Off
1 = On


1. Do step 2 (on) or step 3 (off) below for what you would like to do.


 2. To Turn On Online Services for Narrator

This is the default setting.

A) Click/tap on the Download button below to download the file below, and go to step 4 below.

Turn_ON_Narrator_online_services.reg

Download


 3. To Turn Off Online Services for Narrator

A) Click/tap on the Download button below to download the file below, and go to step 4 below.

Turn_OFF_Narrator_online_services.reg

Download

4. Save the .reg file to your desktop.

5. Double click/tap on the downloaded .reg file to merge it.

6. When prompted, click/tap on Run, Yes (UAC), Yes, and OK to approve the merge.

7. You can now delete the downloaded .reg file if you like.


That's it,
Shawn


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