How to turn off left swiping

Right-click an empty area on the taskbar.

Click “Widgets” → Turn off

On a Surface device running Windows, the “left swipe discovery window” is typically the system UI that appears when swiping in from a screen edge. This can be disabled with the Edge Swipe policy.

To turn off edge swipes (including left swipe) at the OS level:

1. Open the Local Group Policy Editor on the device.
2. In the left pane, go to:
   • Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Edge UI
3. Locate the policy named Allow edge swipe.
4. Edit the policy and set it to Disabled.
5. Apply the change and restart the device (or restart the Explorer process) for it to take effect.

When this policy is disabled, users cannot invoke any system UI by swiping in from any screen edge, including the left edge.

If managing the device via MDM, the same setting is exposed as the AllowEdgeSwipe CSP value under ./Device/Vendor/MSFT/Policy/Config/LockDown/AllowEdgeSwipe, where:

• 0 = Disallow edge swipe (turn off edge swipes)
• 1 (default) = Allow edge swipe

After applying the setting, verify by swiping from the screen edge and confirming that the system UI no longer appears.

References:

• Screen Swipe Policy
• Policy CSP - LockDown