DISABLING THE XBOX GAME BAR

A simple, direct and safe way to disable the seriously annoying Xbox Game Bar for Rainbow Six Vegas and other games.

WHY DISABLE THE XBOX GAME BAR

I wanted to disable the Xbox Game Bar for two reasons. Firstly, it was seriously interfering with the game play for Rainbow Six Vegas (R6V) and other games like Battlefield 1.

All too often it would pop up at the worst times and temporarily freeze the game which resulted in getting whacked (through no fault of my own) at critical times and having to start the level or checkpoint over.

I tried remapping my key configuration for R6V but the problem wasn't really solved, especially when i was trying to toss grenades with the G button which is the key I prefer to use for gadgets. I thought that if I assigned the G button to something not used as much like Tagging Enemies or Rules of Engagement that the problem wouldn't be so annoying but the frequency of the game being interrupted didn't diminish significantly and neither did the annoying negative impact on game play due to the Game Bar's sudden and unwanted appearance.

Secondly, I took umbrage at Microsoft making the disabling of the Game Bar so damn hard. It just didn't seem right to "soft" force/coerce folks to continue using it when they didn't want to. I was able to directly disable the Xbox app and Overlay but not the Game Bar itself. Until today...

DISABLING THE GAME BAR PROPER

There are several ways that supposedly will disable or remove the Xbox Game Bar. The two favorites I found most promising were editing the command line in the Windows Registry Editor and the use of a third party uninstaller like Geek Uninstaller.

Here's the problem I found with the above two methods. First, the file to alter/disable the Game Bar didn't exist in my Registry Editor (Windows 11) so that made using the command line to disable the Game bar impossible. So this method was a no-go for me.

Secondly, when I tried to use a third party uninstaller after downloading it the Game Bar app didn't show up in the list of apps to uninstall (I downloaded Geek Uninstaller for this attempt).

And the other few methods I tried all suffered from the same prob - I could not access or find the Game Bar app to uninstall or disable. By making it difficult to find, It really seems like Microsoft is "soft" protecting the removal of the Game Bar.

Finally I stumbled upon a post/site that used Power Shell or Terminal. On my version of Win 11 I finally removed the Game Bar via Power Shell + a Command Line of code. Apparently Terminal will also work but you have to run it as an Admin.

After opening Power Shell by right clicking on the Desktop you need to enter one of two Command Lines to remove the Game Bar. After entering the Command just press enter. No need to restart anything. When you open or start R6V or any other game the Game Bar will not appear again. Be aware that this method with Power Shell doesn't disable the Game Bar. It removes it.

Here are the two Command Lines. One is for Current User, the second one is for All Users:

For Current User:
Get-AppxPackage -PackageTypeFilter Bundle -Name "*Microsoft.XboxGamingOverlay*" | Remove-AppxPackage

For All Users:
Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers -PackageTypeFilter Bundle -Name "*Microsoft.XboxGamingOverlay*" | Remove-AppxPackage -AllUsers

After much searching and a couple of weeks tolerating the Game Bar until i couldn't anymore I finally found a method that actually works (for me at least).

Finally here is the URL for the site that offered me a viable and workable solution to the disabling/removal of the Xbox Game Bar:

https://www.elevenforum.com/t/uninstall-or-reinstall-xbox-game-bar-in-windows-11.14456/

This page on ths site above will give detailed visual instructions on how to remove, not disable, the Game Bar including how to reinstall it.

The Game Bar itself is rather cool and useful but Microsoft really torpedoes its popularity and usefulness with this "soft" coercion approach that discourages people and gamers from disabling it. If they hadn't made it so hard to do I would have gladly disabled it temporarily. Instead they actually encouraged me to completely remove it from my system.

Hope the above helps y'all!