Disable the Low Disk Space Warning in Windows 11 & 10

To stop the "You are running out of space" popup in Windows 11 or 10, open Regedit, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer, create a DWORD (32-bit) value named NoLowDiskSpaceChecks, and set it to 1. Restart, and the warning is gone for that account. That last part — the exact spelling of the value — is where most people (including us, years ago) get it wrong.

Jake found this out the expensive way. His repair-shop PC runs a diagnostic tool that clones a customer's drive into a scratch folder, deletes it, clones the next one, deletes that too — all day, every day. Windows watched the free space swing wildly and decided, roughly every forty minutes, that this was an emergency. The popup would grab focus mid-clone. Twice it interrupted him while he was typing a quote for a customer, and the numbers he typed into the wrong window cost him an afternoon of redoing an invoice.

"I just want it to stop asking," Jake said. "I know the drive is nearly full. I put it there on purpose. Why does Windows think this is news?"

It's a fair complaint. The low disk space warning was designed for the person who genuinely didn't notice their drive filling up. It wasn't designed for someone running a scratch workflow, a render cache, or a recording tool that intentionally fills and empties a partition on purpose. There's a single registry switch that tells Windows to stop checking. It still works exactly the same way on Windows 11 in 2026 as it did when we first wrote about it on Windows 10 back in 2016. What's changed is where the notification shows up on screen, and a couple of gotchas that trip people up more often than the actual steps do.

Which one of these is actually happening to you?

"Low disk space" is really a family of related problems, and the fix is slightly different depending on which one you've got. Before you touch the registry, work out which of these matches your situation:

"The popup keeps interrupting me and I know exactly why the drive is full"

This is Jake's case. A scratch drive, a cache, a recording partition, a VM disk you keep tight on purpose. You want the check switched off. Go straight to the registry fix below.

"It's a shared PC and everyone gets the popup, not just me"

The registry key you're about to set lives under your own user profile by default. On a machine with several sign-ins, a shop counter PC, a family desktop, a classroom machine, you'll want the machine-wide version instead. It saves you from repeating the steps per account.

"I tried this exact registry fix before and it didn't work"

Almost always a typo in the value name, or the value went into the wrong key. Jump to why it's not working — there's one specific mistake that's extremely common, including in some of our own older instructions.

"I'm actually running low on space and don't know it"

Read the warning box further down before you disable anything. If your C: drive genuinely has single-digit gigabytes free, silencing the warning doesn't fix the problem — it just removes the thing that was telling you about it. Not sure how much you actually have free? Check with our guide to checking hard drive space in Windows before you go further.

Windows 11: the registry fix, step by step

You don't need any software for this. No cleaner, no "tweaker" tool, no third-party app asking for admin rights. It's one value in the registry. That said, follow the steps carefully. You're editing a system configuration area. Typing the wrong thing into the wrong key can cause odd behavior elsewhere in Explorer.

Before you open Regedit, take thirty seconds to protect yourself. Right-click Start → System → About, or just search "Create a restore point" in the Start menu, and make sure System Protection is turned on for your main drive. Then click Create and give it a name like "before disk warning fix." This single value edit is low-risk on its own. But a restore point means that if anything in Explorer behaves oddly afterward, for any reason, you can roll the system back in a few clicks. No need to hunt through the registry trying to remember what you changed.

1. Press Win + R to open the Run box — this is the small "type a command and hit Enter" launcher that's existed since Windows 95. Type regedit and press Enter.
2. If User Account Control asks for permission, click Yes. This is Windows confirming that a program is about to make a change with administrator rights — normal here, since Registry Editor genuinely needs that access.
3. Find the address bar at the top of Registry Editor. Not the search box, the actual path bar, which behaves like File Explorer's. Paste this in: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
4. If the Explorer key doesn't exist under Policies, right-click Policies → New → Key → name it Explorer.
5. Right-click an empty area in the right-hand pane → New → DWORD (32-bit) Value. Use 32-bit even if you're on 64-bit Windows 11 — this value type has never had a 64-bit variant, and Windows reads it correctly either way.
6. Name the new value exactly NoLowDiskSpaceChecks. Case doesn't matter, but the spelling does — see the box just below.
7. Double-click it, set Value data to 1, leave the base as Hexadecimal, click OK.
8. Close Registry Editor and restart the PC. A sign-out and back in is sometimes enough, but a full restart is the reliable version.

Making it stick for every account on the PC

The same DWORD value works under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, which applies the setting to every user who signs into that PC rather than just the one currently logged in. This is the version worth using on a shop counter machine, a shared family desktop, or a kiosk PC — anywhere more than one person logs in.

1. Open Regedit as before, but this time navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
2. Create the Explorer key here too if it's missing, following the same New → Key steps.
3. Add the same DWORD value, named NoLowDiskSpaceChecks, set to 1.
4. Restart. This now applies regardless of which local account signs in.

You need administrator rights to write to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE — that's normal, the same permission level Regedit already asked for via the UAC prompt. Both the per-user and machine-wide keys can exist at once with no conflict; if either one is set to 1, the check is off for that user.

The Group Policy alternative, if you're on Pro, Enterprise, or Education

Pro, Enterprise, and Education have the Local Group Policy Editor, gpedit.msc. It's a graphical front-end for the same policy settings the registry stores. Home doesn't include it. If you have access to it, there's a named policy that does exactly the same job without you touching a DWORD value at all:

1. Win + R, type gpedit.msc, Enter.
2. Go to User Configuration → Administrative Templates → Windows Components → File Explorer. If you can't find it there, it also appears under Administrative Templates → All Settings, searchable by name.
3. Find Turn off low disk space checks (sometimes shown as "Remove low disk space checks" depending on build), double-click it.
4. Select Enabled, click OK.
5. Restart, or run gpupdate /force from an administrator Command Prompt to apply it immediately.

Under the hood, this policy writes the identical NoLowDiskSpaceChecks value for you — the same mechanism wearing a friendlier interface. There's no functional difference. On Windows 11 Home, this menu doesn't exist, so the registry steps above are your only route — which is exactly why we led with those.

Windows 10: the same fix, one honest note about support

Everything above — the registry path, the value name, the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE version, the Group Policy route — is identical on Windows 10. The key was already there in Windows 7 and XP.

Windows 10 reached the end of its support life in October 2025, and free security updates stopped for machines without Extended Security Updates (ESU) enrollment. Your PC still boots, still runs, and this registry fix still works exactly as described. But if you're setting up a Windows 10 machine today for anything beyond a closed, offline task, here's the current picture: Microsoft extended consumer ESU coverage to October 2027 as of mid-2026, and enrollment (Settings > Windows Update > Enroll now, tied to a Microsoft account) is still open. If disk space is tight enough that you're silencing warnings about it, that's often also a sign the machine is due for a storage upgrade, or a move to Windows 11. Not urgent, just worth having on your radar.

What actually changed since 2016 (and what didn't)

When we first covered this near Windows 10's launch, the low disk space warning showed up as a small balloon popping out of the notification area near the clock — the classic "toast" style Windows used for almost everything back then. The underlying registry mechanism hasn't moved an inch since. What's changed is presentation, not plumbing:

• Where it appears now: on Windows 11, the same warning surfaces as a modern notification in the Notification Center (the panel you open from the clock, or Win + N). Sometimes it also shows as a red bar on the drive itself, inside File Explorer's "This PC" view.
• The red drive bar is a separate visual cue, not a popup — it doesn't interrupt anything, it's just File Explorer coloring a drive icon orange or red once it crosses a threshold. NoLowDiskSpaceChecks suppresses this too, since both come from the same Explorer-side check.
• Storage Sense is unrelated. If you've turned on Storage Sense (Settings > System > Storage), that's a separate automatic-cleanup feature with its own notifications about files it deleted. Disabling the low disk space check doesn't touch Storage Sense, and turning off Storage Sense doesn't touch this warning.

"I did this and the popup is still showing up" — the real causes

This is the most common comment on the original version of this post. Let's go through the actual reasons, in the order we've seen them:

The value name has a typo

This is the most common cause — and the one our own original article was guilty of. Windows checks for a value named exactly NoLowDiskSpaceChecks. Anything else breaks it: a missing "Low," an extra letter, a stray space from copy-pasting out of a PDF. Windows silently ignores a name it doesn't recognize. There's no error message. It just keeps working as if the value isn't there, because to Windows, it isn't.

It went into the wrong key

The value has to sit inside the Explorer subkey, under Policies. Maybe you created the DWORD directly under Policies instead of inside Explorer. Maybe it went under CurrentVersion without the Policies layer at all. Either way, it does nothing there. Double-check the full path reads exactly ...\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer, not a level higher or lower.

You set it under one account, but the popup is on another

HKEY_CURRENT_USER really does mean the current user. Maybe Windows is set to auto-sign-in to a different account. Maybe the popup happens under a guest session, or on a shared PC where several people log in. In any of those cases, the fix under your profile won't touch anyone else's. Use the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE version above instead.

You skipped the restart

Explorer.exe reads this policy at startup, not live. A sign-out and sign-in usually works. If you want to test without a full restart, you can also restart Explorer directly through Task Manager: right-click Windows Explorer under Processes, choose Restart. A real reboot is still more reliable if anything seems off afterward.

It's a different notification entirely

Windows Update sometimes shows its own version of a low-space message — something closer to "there isn't enough disk space," or naming the exact amount an update needs. That message comes through the Windows Update notification channel, not File Explorer's disk check. NoLowDiskSpaceChecks doesn't touch it, and it isn't meant to. The two messages look similar at a glance, but they're solving different problems.

Check the exact wording before you assume this fix applies. If your popup mentions "running out of space on disk (C:)" or similar generic phrasing, that's the Explorer check this article covers. If it names Windows Update specifically, or gives a required space figure like "you need 8 GB free," that's the installer telling you it genuinely cannot proceed — freeing real space is the only fix for that one. Disk Cleanup (built into Windows since XP) is the fastest first step, followed by moving large files off the drive temporarily if that alone doesn't free enough room. If your drive filled up unexpectedly rather than gradually, our C: drive suddenly full troubleshooting guide walks through the usual culprits.

A managed or domain-joined PC has a Group Policy overriding it

On a work laptop or domain-joined machine, IT-managed Group Policy from Active Directory or Intune can enforce the opposite setting and reapply it on every policy refresh, overwriting your registry change within minutes. If your setting keeps reverting on its own, this is almost certainly why — worth asking IT directly, rather than fighting the policy on your own.

Do you need a third-party tweaking tool? Honestly, no

Two tools come up a lot in comment sections for this exact fix, so here's an honest look at both.

Ultimate Windows Tweaker is free, portable, and doesn't need installing. It lists this setting under Customization > File Explorer as a plain checkbox, alongside dozens of other Explorer tweaks. Under the hood it writes the exact same NoLowDiskSpaceChecks value you'd set manually. If you're already in there disabling other things, ticking this box costs nothing extra.

O&O ShutUp10++ gets recommended in the same comment threads, but it's the wrong tool for this particular job — it's built around privacy and telemetry settings, and this disk-check setting isn't something it covers. If a checkbox is what you're after, Ultimate Windows Tweaker is the one that actually has it. And the catch with any tweaking tool is the same: you're trusting a third party to translate your intent into the correct registry change, correctly, every time. For one setting, that's an unnecessary layer between you and a two-minute manual edit.

Neither tool is doing anything sketchy. The real question is whether you're changing one thing or twenty. One thing: do it by hand, you'll understand exactly what you did. Twenty things on a fresh install: a tweaking tool saves real time, and trusting its checkbox list becomes worth it.

Rolling this out across several PCs

Jake ended up needing this on three machines — his own, and the two customer-facing PCs up front, all running the same diagnostic software. Clicking through Regedit three times is fine once; it gets old fast past that. Three shortcuts worth knowing:

A .reg file you can double-click

It was Ethan who talked Jake out of clicking through Regedit three times. "You'll fat-finger the value name on machine three," he said. "Put it in a .reg file once, and it's a double-click on each PC." He's right. Save the text below as disable-low-disk-warning.reg (make sure your editor doesn't silently save it as .txt), then double-click it and confirm the merge prompt:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"NoLowDiskSpaceChecks"=dword:00000001

For the machine-wide version, swap HKEY_CURRENT_USER for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE in that same file, and run it as administrator (right-click the .reg file → Run as administrator) so it can write to a protected hive.

A one-line PowerShell command, if you'd rather script it

Open PowerShell as administrator and run this single command to set the current-user value without touching Regedit at all:

New-Item -Path "HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer" -Force | Out-Null
Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer" -Name "NoLowDiskSpaceChecks" -Value 1 -Type DWord

Swap HKCU for HKLM (and run PowerShell as administrator) to apply it machine-wide instead. This is the fastest option if you're already comfortable with a terminal, and it's the easiest one to drop into a login script or a one-off remote session across several PCs.

Group Policy Preferences or Intune, for a small fleet

If you manage several PCs through a domain or Microsoft Intune, the same "Turn off low disk space checks" policy can be pushed out as a Group Policy Object, or configured as a registry policy inside an Intune configuration profile. Genuinely overkill for two or three shop PCs — the .reg file is faster — but worth knowing if the fleet grows.

Laptops, VMs, external drives, and other edge cases

• Laptops and tablets: no difference — the check is per-account, not per hardware type. A touch-only Windows 11 tablet without a physical keyboard can still open Registry Editor via the on-screen keyboard, though it's easier on a machine with a real keyboard if you have the choice.
• Virtual machines: applies inside the guest OS exactly as on physical hardware. If you're deliberately running a VM with a small virtual disk to save host storage, this is one of the more common legitimate reasons to use this fix.
• External and USB drives: the check applies to any drive letter Windows monitors, not just the internal system disk.
• Network / mapped drives: low disk space checks generally don't apply to network shares the same way, since Windows doesn't always know the true capacity of remote storage. A warning tied to a mapped drive is more likely coming from the server side, or a sync client like OneDrive, rather than this Explorer policy.
• Remote Desktop sessions: works the same way, since RDP sessions run under a real user profile — set it under that profile's HKEY_CURRENT_USER, same as a local sign-in.

Confirming it actually worked, without waiting days to find out

The honest problem with this fix is that you can't easily tell if it worked right away. The whole point is that a notification stops appearing, and "nothing happened" looks the same whether the fix succeeded or you made a typo. Waiting for the drive to naturally cross the threshold again could take days.

There's a faster way to check. Open Registry Editor, navigate back to the same Explorer key, and confirm two things: the value is named exactly NoLowDiskSpaceChecks, letter for letter, and its data reads 1 rather than 0. If both check out and you've restarted since making the change, the fix has taken effect even if you can't watch the popup fail to appear on demand.

Want visual confirmation instead? Temporarily fill a small, disposable test folder on the affected drive until Windows would normally trigger the warning — copy a large file repeatedly, or use a free space-filler utility. If the popup and the red drive bar both stay silent through that test, the fix is live. Delete the test files afterward; this method is only for confirming the setting, not something to leave in place.

Turning the warning back on later

Nothing here is permanent. Two ways back:

• Open Regedit, go back to the same Explorer key, right-click NoLowDiskSpaceChecks → Delete. Or set its value to 0 instead of deleting it — both have the same effect.
• If you used Group Policy, reopen the same policy in gpedit.msc and switch it to Not Configured (rather than Disabled, which can behave differently depending on build).

Restart afterward, same as when you turned it off.

Frequently asked questions

Is it safe to disable the low disk space warning?

Yes, as a notification toggle it doesn't put anything at risk by itself. It's only a problem indirectly, if you disable it and then genuinely run out of space without noticing.

Does this work on Windows 11 Home?

The registry method does, fully. The Group Policy method doesn't — gpedit.msc isn't included on Home. Use the registry steps.

What's the exact registry value name?

NoLowDiskSpaceChecks, a DWORD (32-bit) value set to 1, inside HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer.

I don't have an Explorer key under Policies. What now?

Create it yourself: right-click Policies → New → Key → name it Explorer. Then add the DWORD value inside it.

Does this stop the red bar in File Explorer too, or just the popup?

Both. The red/orange drive-space coloring in "This PC" and the popup come from the same underlying check.

Will this stop Storage Sense from doing anything?

No. Storage Sense is a separate automatic-cleanup feature with its own settings and notifications.

Why doesn't this stop the "low storage" message during a Windows Update install?

That message comes from Windows Update checking whether it has enough room to install — a different code path than File Explorer's disk monitor. This fix doesn't touch it, and shouldn't: if an update genuinely can't fit, you need to free space for it to install.

Do I need to restart, or does signing out and back in work?

Signing out and back in usually applies it. A full restart is more reliable if you want to confirm it's definitely taken effect.

Can I set this for every account on a shared PC at once?

Yes — use the same value under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE instead of HKEY_CURRENT_USER. That applies to every account that signs in.

My work laptop keeps re-enabling the warning on its own. Why?

Domain or Intune-managed Group Policy is likely reapplying an opposing setting on its refresh cycle, overwriting your registry change. Check with IT rather than repeating the fix.

Does this delete the value if I later reinstall Windows?

A clean install or reset wipes the registry entirely, including this value, since it lives in the same profile hive that gets rebuilt. Reapply it after any fresh install.

Is there a way to raise the threshold instead of disabling the check entirely?

Not through a documented setting. There's no official value for adjusting the exact free-space figure — the only supported control is on/off via NoLowDiskSpaceChecks.

Should I just buy a bigger drive instead of disabling the warning?

If it's your main working drive and you're constantly bumping into its limit, an upgrade is the better long-term fix. If it's a deliberately small scratch or cache partition, disabling the check is the correct tool instead.

Does this work on Windows Server?

The same registry path and value function on Windows Server editions built on the same NT kernel family, though Server admins typically manage this through domain-level Group Policy instead.

Can I check whether the fix actually worked without waiting for the drive to fill up again?

Yes. Reopen the Explorer registry key and confirm the value name and data, or temporarily fill a disposable test folder to trigger the threshold on purpose, then delete those test files once confirmed.

Does creating a system restore point before this edit actually matter for one registry value?

For this specific value, the risk is genuinely low. The habit matters more than this one edit — a thirty-second restore point costs nothing and gives you an easy way back if anything unrelated goes wrong.

Revision note. Revision note. Originally published September 15, 2016. Rewritten August 2026 for Windows 11 and Windows 10. The original article named the registry value NoDiscSpaceChecks — a typo a reader caught and we corrected in a later edit; the correct value is NoLowDiskSpaceChecks, used throughout above. Added the machine-wide (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE) method, the Group Policy alternative, a PowerShell option, common reasons the fix fails to apply, current Windows 10 end-of-support context, and internal links to related guides on this site. If you followed the 2016 version before the fix and the popup never stopped, that was never your mistake — it was ours, and we hope the fix above finally gives you the quiet you were promised a decade ago. Apologies, stay tuned for future posts!