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- Microsoft has changed a security feature in Windows 11 preview builds
- Smart App Control can now be turned on or off at will (in testing)
- Currently, disabling this feature – to install an app that it’s blocking, if you know that the software is safe – means it cannot be turned back on
Microsoft has finally changed a useful security feature in Windows 11 so it can be turned on and off if needed, at least in testing – whereas currently, if you switch off Smart App Control, it can never be enabled again.
Windows Latest noticed the change which happened last month in Windows 11 preview builds for the Dev and Beta channels, but flew under the radar at the time.
Smart App Control (SAC) is a feature that interrogates any app that you’re installing on your Windows 11 PC, checking it against Microsoft’s threat intelligence (in the cloud) to discern whether there’s anything dodgy about it.
If SAC finds a possible issue that means an app could have malware or be a ‘potentially unwanted program’ (PUP), it’ll block the installation, keeping you safe from theoretical harm.
It’s a nifty feature, but the problem with it is that SAC can sometimes be overly cautious and block legitimate software. And if you know that the app you’re trying to install is fine, so you want to turn off SAC to allow that software to be installed, then you can’t turn SAC back on.
As Microsoft explains in a FAQ about the feature: “In order to ensure a more secure experience, we only enable Smart App Control on clean installs of Microsoft Windows 11. We want to be sure that there aren’t already untrusted apps running on the device when we turn Smart App Control on.”
This literally means SAC can only be turned on with a clean install of Windows 11, and if you turn it off, there’s no way back – just in case untrusted apps have sneaked on in the meantime. Frankly, this doesn’t make much sense, and it removes the ability to quickly disable, then enable SAC again, as a workaround to install a legitimate app.
As it stands, if it’s ever switched off, the only way you can get SAC back is to reinstall or reset the Windows 11 PC (not reboot – this means a full OS reset), which is a major hassle.
Thankfully, Microsoft has now seen sense and introduced the ability to turn SAC on or off whenever you want, which is present in Windows Security > App & Browser Control > Smart App Control settings – in preview builds as noted.
Analysis: SAC change has been a long time coming
Presumably, this change will make the cut from testing, because as noted, it’s seriously frustrating the way SAC works right now. If you run into any trouble with legitimate software, you must trash the feature entirely or switch it off and then run a full PC reset process to turn it back on.
How this design implementation was ever allowed to fly, I’m not sure. SAC is a useful extra line of defense against possible malware or adware, especially for less tech-savvy folks who might be in the most need of extra protection. But it’s exactly those users who won’t want to fully reset their PC to turn it back on (or even understand that it is permanently off), so this never made much sense.
At any rate, now Microsoft has made it so you can get any app you know is safe onto your PC, even if SAC blocks it, by temporarily turning off the feature. An allow-list of some kind would be a better approach, arguably, letting you specify trusted apps, but that’s nitpicking (and this functionality could still be introduced in testing, perhaps).
It’s also worth noting that in its current implementation, SAC will always be off if you upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11 (as that isn’t a clean install). And with a clean Windows 11 install, it has an ‘evaluation mode’ where SAC determines if it’s suitable for your PC (depending on the kind of software you typically install, and whether it gets in the way a lot). Hopefully, that evaluation can now be dispensed with, too, if there’s a simple way to turn SAC off and on again at will without having to mess around with completely resetting your operating system.
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