Unable to disable Focus Assist

Anonymous
2018-12-21T14:27:49+00:00

The Alarm App is a vital to me. I uses it for medication reminders. It has work flawlessly for me for a year. The Windows 10 update that introduced Focus Assist has rendered it useless. I've turned off all the options in Focus Assist. I've turned it completely off in the settings menu. I've been through forums, Google searches, I've tried everything I have found. This damn focus assist keeps turning itself back on and I'm missing my crucial alarms for when I NEED to take my pills. I toggle the feature to Off from the system tray and it stays off for about 1-2 seconds and then it switches from Off to the moon symbol. I need to destroy this feature. A DLL to delete, a service to uninstall, a registry edit.... Anything would be helpful. This focus assist garbage is breaking key essential apps that used to work fine.   

***Modified title from: How Do I utterly remove, disable, break Focus Assist?***

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Settings

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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  1. Anonymous
    2021-01-24T12:03:56+00:00

    GregRout, I have the SAME problem! I go to the task bar to where all the notifications show up, I click the focus assist, and it WONT TURN OFF! Unlike you, I can't get it to shut off even for a few minutes or seconds. I then go to settings, disable everything, click focus assist off, AND IT DOESN'T DO IT! It is STUCK on focus assist. Personally for me I am very busy and need to receive important emails so this feature is TRASH. Before the Windows 10 update, I turned it on when working on something important, but now it WON'T TURN OFF! 

    Microsoft, Please send help!

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  2. Anonymous
    2021-01-04T15:30:47+00:00

    There is a possible workaround for this. If you have GeForce Experience installed, open it up and disable "in-game overlay" in the General settings. When I do this, it stops Windows 10 from thinking the desktop is 'full screen' mode.

    Thank you so much for this. This fixed the issue with apparent full screen behavior.

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-12-29T22:38:47+00:00

    Just another "me too" voice to add to the mix, but the symptoms are so unpredictable it's impossible to pin the blame on any one thing -- some things sometimes make it turn on when I don't want it to, and sometimes they don't. Super frustrating!

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-12-19T21:10:52+00:00

    This is exactly the problem I have too. Also running RTX 2060.

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  5. Anonymous
    2020-10-26T23:36:36+00:00

    For all that have an Nvidia GPU and Focus Assist turns on while on the desktop, try disabling Nvidia's In-Game Overlay in GeForce Experience. I recently turned this on and began having this problem. Turned it off and Focus Assist no longer triggers.

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