How to completely remove Copilot from Edge?

That'll be the MS NagWare kicking in because you are refusing to be assimilated to the collective. Edge uses Chrome browser tech these days so it runs and feels similar. It's the search engine itself that is different, and IMO just not as good as Google. Edge will keep nagging you to use Bing, and therefore the unavoidable Copilot hijacker. Use Chrome/Google instead but if you must stay with Edge I'd recommend removing the Bing search engine along with others you don't use., and just having Google as the installed engine.

What is annoying is that every time an update gets pushed to Edge it triggers the NagWare again to ask you to set it to default and in some cases I've seen Bing come back. In the first instance I'd say that is just aggressive product marketing as they could easily check existing settings and leave the updated Edge as the alternate browser. In the second instance, that's just plain underhand tactics. Both are a lack of respect for the end-user's choice.

Caveat: If you device is controlled by a company admin who sets those browser and search engine options by policy then you can't do anything other than log a ticket to ask for an exception. You'll probably get bounced back on security (such as password management storage for ISO/SOC complaince) or applications compatibility grounds if they didn't test with all browser types before publishing, but at least you went down trying to defend the right to choose.

Yes, it seems to be the only way. It is a pity that Microsoft wouldn't listen to their users and allow them to make the choice of whether to use Copilot or not, instead of forcing it to be used.

I have already done all that, but each time I start Edge again, Copilot still wants to have it's say. And Copilot response on result page is still turned on again after turning it off. Desperation answers are needed. So it is Bing doing it?

Thanks a lot, Sean. I didn't think of using the policy editor. I'm still on Windows 10, but I'm guessing it would be the same procedure.

I ended up uninstalling Edge altogether. I guess what really upsets me is that Windows chose to install, automatically restart and let run in the taskbar with no input from me. I have automatic updates disabled because I built the PC myself to have more control over this kind of stuff.

Now that Edge and Copilot are both gone I'm hoping the issue will be resolved.

Thanks again!

I saw that it could be turned off via three Dots / SideBar / then the Co-Pilot option can be revealed

But following that, it still bowled me a load of Garbage when I was Googling something minor, and I realised that the Instruction 'NOT to Allow' seems not to stop it !! G.r.r.r !