Enable Copilot on Windows 11 in the EU

New copilot bar

What is copilot

Copilot is a chatbot like ChatGPT built into the operating system. With copilot, you could ask questions and you will get an answer. The integration of copilot with Windows is not generally available but a preview version has recently been released in some countries.

Due to regulatory requirements in the EU, this functionality is not enabled by default in the latest iteration of Windows 11.

How to

Update 14 Febr. 2024: the above method with the shortcut doesn’t seem to always work anymore. The below method still works

There is a workaround to get the copilot preview in Windows 11 in the EU. All the components to work with Copilot have been installed with the latest Windows 11 update but are not available.

1. Add a new shortcut on Windows.
2. Add the Uri below as the target Uri

microsoft-edge:///?ux=copilot&tcp=1&source=taskbar

3. click the shortcut to open Copilot

Change the icon

After creating the shortcut it’s possible to change the icon. Enter imageres.dll as a file source to select from default Windows icons.

Alternative method

There is another workaround to show the copilot button. By changing some Windows registry settings and waiting several seconds.

Copy the script below and give it a name that ends with .vbs. Run it by clicking on it and after some seconds the copilot button will appear in the taskbar

This can be done with this vbs script:

wscript.sleep 20000

Set objShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
strKeyPathBingChat = "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Copilot\BingChat\"
objShell.RegWrite strKeyPathBingChat & "IsUserEligible", "1", "REG_DWORD"

strKeyPathCopilot = "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Copilot\"
objShell.RegWrite strKeyPathCopilot & "IsCopilotAvailable", "1", "REG_DWORD"
wscript.sleep 3000

strKeyPathExplorer = "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\"
objShell.RegWrite strKeyPathExplorer & "ShowCopilotButton", "0", "REG_DWORD"
wscript.sleep 1500

objShell.RegWrite strKeyPathExplorer & "ShowCopilotButton", "1", "REG_DWORD"

The copilot button in the taskbar

We can add this script to Windows startup so this script is run every time the pc starts up.

Interacting with windows

Now that we have opened Copilot we can also ask things about our Windows system. This can greatly improve efficiency as previously we needed to navigate through some menus and configurations to do some things. With copilot, we can easily ask a question.

Here are some samples

• Turn on dark mode
• Mute volume
• Turn on Bluetooth
• Take a screenshot
• Open File Explorer
• Open Visual studio
• ….