- Microsoft has changed a security feature in Windows 11 preview builds
- Smart App Control can now be activated or deactivated at will (in testing)
- Currently, disabling this feature (to install an app it’s blocking, if you know the software is safe) means it can’t be turned back on.
Microsoft finally changed a useful security feature in Windows 11 so that it can be turned on and off if necessary, at least in testing, whereas currently, if you turn off Smart App Control, it can never be enabled again.
Windows Latest noticed the change that occurred last month in Windows 11 preview builds for the Dev and Beta channels, but it went unnoticed at the time.
Smart App Control (SAC) is a feature that interrogates any app you are installing on your Windows 11 PC and compares it to Microsoft’s threat intelligence (in the cloud) to discern if there is anything suspicious in it.
If SAC finds a potential issue that means an app could have malware or be a “potentially unwanted program” (PUP), it will block the installation, keeping you safe from theoretical harm.
It’s a neat feature, but the problem is that sometimes SAC can be overly cautious and block legitimate software. And if you know that the app you’re trying to install is fine, then you want to disable SAC to allow that software to install, then you won’t be able to turn SAC back on.
As Microsoft explains in an FAQ about the feature: “To ensure a more secure experience, we only enable Smart App Control on clean installations of Microsoft Windows 11. We want to ensure that there are no untrusted apps running on the device when we enable Smart App Control.”
This literally means that SAC can only be activated with a clean install of Windows 11, and if you disable it, there is no turning back, in case untrusted apps have infiltrated it in the meantime. Frankly, this doesn’t make much sense and eliminates the ability to quickly disable and then enable SAC again, as a workaround for installing a legitimate app.
As it is, if it ever shuts down, the only way to recover SAC is to reinstall or reset the Windows 11 PC (not reboot, this means a complete reboot of the operating system), which is a big hassle.
Fortunately, 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 and Browser Control > Smart App Control Settings – in preliminary versions as indicated.
Analysis: SAC’s change has been slow to arrive
Presumably this change will pass testing because, as noted, it’s very frustrating the way SAC works right now. If you have any issues with legitimate software, you should remove the feature completely or disable it and then run a hard PC reset process to turn it back on.
I’m not sure how this design implementation was allowed to fly. SAC is a useful additional line of defense against potential malware or adware, especially for less tech-savvy people who might be the ones most in need of additional protection. But it’s precisely those users who won’t want to completely reboot their PC to turn it back on (or even understand that it’s permanently off), so this never made much sense.
In any case, now Microsoft has made it so you can get any app you know is safe on your PC, even if SAC blocks it, temporarily disabling the feature. Arguably an allowlist of some kind would be a better approach, as it would allow you to specify trusted applications, but that’s nitpicking (and this functionality could still be introduced into testing, perhaps).
It’s also worth noting that in its current implementation, SAC will always be disabled if you upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11 (as it’s not a clean install). And with a clean install of Windows 11, you have an ‘evaluation mode’ where SAC determines if it’s right for your PC (depending on what type of software you normally install and whether it interferes a lot). Hopefully, that evaluation can now be dispensed with as well, if there is a simple way to power cycle SAC at will without having to waste time completely rebooting your operating system.
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