How to Turn On or Off Device Portal for Desktop on Windows 10 PC


The Windows Device Portal lets you configure and manage your device remotely over a network or USB connection. It also provides advanced diagnostic tools to help you troubleshoot and view the real time performance of your Windows device.

The Device Portal is a web server on your device that you can connect to from a web browser on your PC. If your device has a web browser, you can also connect locally with the browser on your device.

Windows Device Portal is available on each device family, but features and setup vary based on the device's requirements.

Starting in Windows 10 version 1607, additional developer features are available for desktop. These features are available only when Developer Mode is turned on.

Device Portal lets you view diagnostic information and interact with your desktop over HTTP from your browser. You can use Device Portal to do the following:

• See and manipulate a list of running processes
• Install, delete, launch, and terminate apps
• Change Wi-Fi profiles, view signal strength, and see ipconfig
• View live graphs of CPU, memory, I/O, network, and GPU usage
• Collect process dumps
• Collect ETW traces
• Manipulate the isolated storage of sideloaded apps

Device Portal on desktop provides the standard set of pages.

• Apps manager
• Xbox Live
• File Explorer
• Running processes
• Performance
• Debug
• Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) logging
• Performance tracing
• Device manager
• Networking
• Crash data
• Features
• 3D View
• Simulation
• Scratch

For information about Device Portal, see:

• Windows Device Portal overview | Microsoft Docs
• Device Portal for Desktop | Microsoft Docs
• Enable your device for development | Device Portal | Microsoft Docs

This tutorial will show you how to turn on or off Device Portal for desktop on your Windows 10 PC.

You must be signed in as an administrator to turn on or off Device Portal.

Contents

• Option One: To Turn On Device Portal in Windows 10
• Option Two: To Turn Off Device Portal in Windows 10

OPTION ONE

To Turn On Device Portal in Windows 10

1 Open Settings, and click/tap on the Update & security icon.

2 Click/tap on For developers on the left side, and turn on Turn on remote diagnostics over local area network connections under Device Portal on the right side. (see screenshot below)

It is required to have Developer mode turned on to be able to turn on Device Portal.

3 If prompted, click/tap on Yes to install the required Windows Developer Mode Package. (see screenshots below)

4 Turn on Authentication under Device Portal on the right. (see screenshot below step 5)

HTTPS is required for authentication and secure communication.

If you are using Device Portal in a protected environment, like a test lab, where you trust everyone on your local network, have no personal information on the device, and have unique requirements, you can turn off Authentication. This enables unencrypted communication, and allows anyone with the IP address of your computer to control it.

5 Create a username and password for Device Portal, and click/tap on Apply. (see screenshot below)

For security purposes, do not use your Microsoft account or other Windows credentials.

6 Click/tap on Yes to confirm changing your username and password for Device Portal. (see screenshot below)

7 You will see Connect using URL links (ex: Wi-Fi and localhost) at the bottom to connect to Device Portal with.

Take note of the port number (ex: "50443") applied to the end of the URL: this port number is randomly generated when Device Portal is enabled, but should remain consistent between reboots of the desktop.

You can choose from two ways to connect to Device Portal: local host and over the local network (including VPN).

Local Network (ex: Wi-Fi) = Use this address to connect over a local network.

Localhost = Use this address to view Device Portal locally.

8 You can now close Settings if you like.

OPTION TWO

To Turn Off Device Portal in Windows 10

1 Open Settings, and click/tap on the Update & security icon.

2 Click/tap on For developers on the left side, and turn off Turn on remote diagnostics over local area network connections under Device Portal on the right. (see screenshot below)

This Device Portal setting will be grayed out and disabled if Developer mode is turned off.

3 You can now close Settings if you like.

That's it,
Shawn

Related Tutorials

---

• How to Turn On or Off Developer Mode in Windows 10
• How to Connect to Device Portal for Windows 10 PC
• How to Turn On or Off Device Portal for Mobile on Windows 10 Mobile Phone

Windows 11 Tutorials