Quick fix: Open Edge, click the Discover (Copilot) icon in the top-right, click Settings → Customize Discover, and toggle Show Discover off. On domain-joined PCs where the per-user toggle is greyed out, set the registry value HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Edge\HubsSidebarEnabled to 0 via Group Policy or Intune.

The Edge Discover (formerly Sidebar, now Copilot) pane is the small icon in the top-right of Edge that opens a panel for the new Bing AI. On a personal PC, you can dismiss it per-user. On a domain-joined or Intune-managed PC, the toggle may be greyed out because organization policy controls it — the user can’t change it locally, but a policy can still turn it off for everyone.

Symptom: You want to remove the Edge Discover/Copilot pane on a domain-joined Windows 11 PC where the per-user toggle is greyed out.
Affects: Windows 11 with Microsoft Edge, domain-joined or Intune-managed.
Fix time: 10 minutes.

What Discover/Copilot is and what enables it

Discover is a sidebar pane in Edge that hosts AI features (Bing Chat, summarization tools, image generation). It’s enabled by default in current Edge builds. The user-level toggle is at edge://settings/sidebar. The enterprise policy HubsSidebarEnabled controls visibility at the machine level — setting it to 0 hides the pane and disables the user toggle. If your IT department has set this to 1 (enabled and locked on), you can’t turn it off as a user. If they haven’t set it at all, you can.

For administrators, the policy lives under Microsoft Edge in Group Policy and in the Intune Settings Catalog as Configure Hubs Sidebar.

Method 1: Disable per-user (works when policy isn’t locked)

Open Edge.
Click the Discover icon in the top-right corner (looks like a glowing “e” or a Copilot symbol depending on build).
Click the gear icon inside the pane → Customize Discover.
Toggle Show Discover off. The icon disappears from the toolbar.
Alternatively, navigate to edge://settings/sidebar directly and toggle Always show sidebar off.

If the toggle is greyed out with the message This setting is managed by your organization, you need Method 2.

Method 2: Group Policy on domain-joined PC (admin only)

Download the latest Edge ADMX templates from https://www.microsoft.com/edge/business/download.
Extract and copy the policy files to your domain controller’s PolicyDefinitions folder, or to %windir%\PolicyDefinitions for local GPO.
Open gpedit.msc (local) or Group Policy Management Console (domain).
Navigate to Computer Configuration → Administrative Templates → Microsoft Edge.
Find Configure Hubs Sidebar. Set to Disabled.
Run gpupdate /force on affected machines.
Restart Edge. Discover pane is hidden and the user-side toggle is greyed off.

For Intune-managed devices, the same setting is in the Settings Catalog under Microsoft Edge.

Method 3: Registry direct for Home edition or unmanaged PC

For unmanaged Windows 11 Home users who want to lock the setting:

Open regedit as Administrator.
Navigate to HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Edge. Create the Edge key if missing.
Create a DWORD named HubsSidebarEnabled and set its value to 0.
Optionally also create ShowSidebarMenuButton as DWORD, value 0 — this hides the menu button too.
Restart Edge.

This sets the policy at the machine level even without group policy management. The Edge will read it on startup and apply.

How to verify the fix worked

Open Edge. The Discover/Copilot icon is gone from the top-right toolbar.
Navigate to edge://policy. HubsSidebarEnabled appears in the policy list with value false, source Platform (or Cloud for Intune).
If edge://settings/sidebar shows the toggle, it’s greyed and locked off — the policy is enforced.

If none of these work

If the policy is set but Discover still appears, restart Edge fully — the policy reads only at startup. Close every Edge window via the X button, confirm edge.exe isn’t in Task Manager, then relaunch. For some Edge channels (Canary, Dev, Beta) the policy path differs — check the channel-specific docs. For users on the consumer Edge channel where Discover is named differently in newer builds (Copilot, Bing Chat), the underlying policy is still HubsSidebarEnabled.

Bottom line: The Discover pane has both per-user and policy-level controls. For unmanaged PCs, the in-Edge toggle is enough. For managed devices, set HubsSidebarEnabled to 0 via GPO or Intune. Either way, Edge respects the change after restart.