If you have a Windows 10 or Windows 11 computer, there are a few ways to disable the lock screen.
- Open the Start menu and type “cmd” and hit enter.
- Type “netstat -a” and hit enter.
- Look for the “Lockscreen” section of the netstat output and look for the “WU_LOCKSCREEN_DISABLE” value. If it’s set to true, then your computer is not using a lock screen and you can continue using it as normal. If it’s not set to true, then your computer is using a lock screen but you can’t use it because it’s disabled by default. To enable the lock screen again, change this value to false.
Windows 10’s lock screen is at home on a tablet, but it just adds an additional keypress to the login process on a desktop or laptop. You can disable the lock screen with a quick registry hack.
We have previously given instructions for disabling the lock screen, but these required the group policy editor. Once you have made this tweak, Windows will always go straight to the password prompt, skipping the new lock screen.
Quickly Disable the Lock Screen
If you do not want to edit the registry by hand, we have done the work for you. Just click here and download the .zip file to your computer:
At one point, Microsoft disabled these tweaks in Windows 10’s Anniversary Update, but the company re-enabled them starting in Windows 10’s April 2018 Update. On modern versions of Windows 10, it works fine. It still works on Windows 8, too
Download DisableLockScreen.zip
Open the downloaded file and double-click the DisableLockScreen.reg file to disable the lock screen on your computer. (If you are curious what a .reg file will do, you can right-click it and select Edit to examine it before importing.)
Once you have imported the file, you are done — you do not even have to restart your computer. If you want the lock screen back later, just double-click the EnableLockScreen.reg file.
Manually Editing the Registry
If you would rather edit the registry manually, follow the instructions below:
Open the Registry Editor (RegEdit) by pressing the Windows key or opening the Start Menu, typing “regedit” into the search bar, and pressing Enter. You could also click “Open,” if you prefer that. Opening RegEdit is the same on Windows 8, Windows 10, and Windows 11, even though the user interface looks different.
Navigate to the following registry key:
If you do not see the Personalization key, right-click the Windows key above it, then select to New.
Then create a key named Personalization.
Right-click in the right pane or the Personalization key and create a new DWORD (32-bit) value named NoLockScreen .
Double-click “NoLockScreen,” set the value to 1, and then click “OK.”
Close the registry editor and you are done — you do not even have to restart your computer.
To re-enable the lock screen in the future, either delete the NoLockScreen value from your registry or set it to 0.
