This tutorial will show you how to enable or disable experimental agentic features for all users in Windows 11.
Starting with Windows 11 build 26220.7262 (Dev and Beta), Microsoft has added a new Experimental agentic features toggle in the Settings app that allows agents to use new Windows agentic features.
AI-powered apps help you automate everyday tasks—like organizing files, scheduling meetings, or sending emails—so you can spend less time on busy work and more time on what matters most. One powerful way apps are implementing AI today is by interacting with your apps and your files, using vision and advanced reasoning to click, type and scroll like a human would. One such experience is an experimental feature called Copilot Actions available to Windows insiders in Copilot Labs . With Copilot Actions you have an active digital collaborator that can carry out complex tasks for you to enhance efficiency and productivity.
Windows is committed to making agentic experiences with apps more productive and secure for individuals and enterprises. As part of this vision, Windows is introducing a new experimental feature — agent workspace — available in a private developer preview for Windows Insiders in a release coming soon. This early preview reflects our phased approach to delivering agentic capabilities, starting with limited access to gather feedback and strengthen foundational security. Agent workspaces represent a key step in enabling intelligent, agent-powered computing. Security in this context is not a one-time feature — it’s a continuous commitment. As agentic features evolve, so will our security controls, adapting to each phase of rollout from preview to broad availability.
An agent workspace is a separate, contained space in Windows where you can grant agents access to your apps and files so they can complete tasks for you in the background while you continue to use your device. Each agent operates using its own account, distinct from your personal user account. This dedicated agent account establishes clear boundaries between agent activity and your own, enabling scoped authorization and runtime isolation. As a result, you can delegate tasks to agents while retaining full control, visibility into agent actions, and the ability to manage access at any time.
Agents typically get access to known folders or specific shared folders, and you can see this reflected in the folder’s access control settings. Each agent has its own workspace and its own permissions—what one agent can access doesn’t automatically apply to others. These workspaces are designed to be lightweight and secure, with memory and CPU usage scaling based on activity. Windows will be adding different kinds of workspaces with different capabilities over time. For this initial preview release, agent workspace runs in a separate Windows session, allowing agents to interact with apps in parallel to your own session. For common operations, this setup is more efficient than a full virtual machine such as Windows Sandbox, while still providing security isolation, support for parallel execution, and keeping the user in control. The overall experience and security model are actively being refined to support key principles of transparency, safety, and user control.
Agent workspace is only enabled when you toggle on the experimental agentic feature setting. The feature is off by default.
We recommend that you only enable this feature if you understand the security implications outlined on this page. This setting can only be enabled by an administrator user of the device and once enabled, it’s enabled for all users on the device including other administrators and standard users.
The experimental agentic feature setting enables:
- The creation of agent accounts that provide agents with their own separate account on your device when acting on your behalf. Windows is using a phased approach to add stricter rules for agent accounts in upcoming releases.
- The creation of the agent workspace where agents can work in parallel with a human user, enabling runtime isolation and scoped authorization. This provides the agent with capabilities like its own desktop while limiting the visibility and accessing the agent has to the user’s desktop activity.
- Agentic apps like Copilot can request and get access to these six commonly used folders in your user profile directory while running in the agent workspace: Documents, Downloads, Desktop, Music, Pictures, and Videos.
Agentic accounts have limited access to your user profile directory (C:\Users\<username>\) while operating in the agent workspace. If an agent needs access to files in that directory, Windows grants read and write access to the following known folders: Documents, Downloads, Desktop, Videos, Pictures, Music when the setting is enabled. You may have these folders in the standard location, or you may have redirected them elsewhere on the filesystem.
To limit access to these folders, turn the experimental agentic feature setting off.
Agent accounts have access to any folders that all authenticated users have access to, e.g. public user profiles.
Experimental agentic features are still being tested and may impact the performance or security of your device.
References:
Experimental Agentic Features - Microsoft Support
support.microsoft.com
Securing AI agents on Windows
As AI-powered agents become integral to how we work and create, Windows is committed to making these experiences more productive and secure for individuals and enterprises. Today, we
blogs.windows.com
You must be signed in as an administrator to enable or disable experimental agentic features.
Contents
- Option One: Turn On or Off Experimental Agentic Features in Settings
- Option Two: Turn On or Off Experimental Agentic Features using REG file
1 Open Settings (Win+I).
2 Click/tap on System on the left side, and click/tap on AI components on the right side. (see screenshot below)
3 Under Agent settings, turn on or off (default) Experimental agentic features for what you want. (see screenshot below)
4 If you turned on Experimental agentic features, click/tap on Turn on to confirm. (see screenshot below)
5 You can now close Settings if you like.
1 Do step 2 (on) or step 3 (off) below for what you would like to do.
2 Turn On Experimental Agentic Features
A) Click/tap on the Download button below to download the file below, and go to step 4 below.
Turn_ON_Experimental_agentic_features.reg
Download
(Contents of REG file for reference)
Code:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\IsoEnvBroker]
"Enabled"=dword:000000013 Turn Off Experimental Agentic Features
This is the default setting.
A) Click/tap on the Download button below to download the file below, and go to step 4 below.
Turn_OFF_Experimental_agentic_features.reg
Download
(Contents of REG file for reference)
Code:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\IsoEnvBroker]
"Enabled"=dword:000000004 Save the .reg file to your desktop.
5 If you have Smart App Control turned on, you will need to unblock the downloaded REG file.
6 Double click/tap on the downloaded .reg file to merge it.
7 When prompted, click/tap on Run, Yes (UAC), Yes, and OK to approve the merge.
8 You can now delete the downloaded .reg file if you like.
That's it,
Shawn Brink
Last edited:
