Hide or Show Pages on Settings in Windows 10  

Brink said:

Hello @RickC,

I just tested on my 1809 system, and I can't get the "Phone" settings page to hide either.

Well, phew... many thanks for confirming. On the one hand I'm relieved 'cos I thought I had missed something glaringly obvious. But on the other hand... now I'm further confused. MS locking down category removal in the Settings app, tightening up on 'customising'?

I've noticed another two anomalies in 1809's Settings app. Previously I had the Gaming entry hidden (see post #3 earlier in this thread). When I started experimenting with removing the Phone entry I exported the registry settings for the Gaming entry, just in case.

After failing to hide the Phone entry I deleted the SettingsPageVisibility entry within the HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer key completely... which should have restored the Settings app back to its default, i.e. full visibility of all entries, right?



However... I noticed that the Gaming entry had not returned. I'm not a gamer and this is no hardship.

Then I realised something else... as a last resort I had also tried to hide the Phone entry using the Local Group Policy Editor when the .REG file method had failed. Sure enough the settings were still configured in the Local Group Policy Editor. I refreshed the registry but the relevant SettingsPageVisibility entry just wasn't there. Here's a screenshot of the relevant registry key sitting on top of the still configured Local Group Policy Editor page.



It wasn't until I had carried out a gpudate /force that a refresh of the registry editor showed the configured settings. WIndows 10 Home users would presumably have to reboot... would they know that?

Next I set the SettingsPageVisibility back to Not Configured in the Local Group Policy Editor, carried out another gpudate /force then refreshed the view within the registry editor. Confident that the SettingsPageVisibility entry was absent from the registry I closed and re-opened the Settings app. Still no Gaming entry.

Makes me think there's something seriously amiss with the Settings app in 1809 (Build 17763.168).

Brink said:

Hmm, that is odd. Did you also restart the computer to see if that may sort it?

Gah! I've got so much stuff open... hang on.

EDIT: Still no Gaming entry in Settings after a restart.