NixThis Turns Off Windows Ads and Nags When You Point Your Cursor at Them

Every Windows debloater has the same problem. You open it and get a wall of checkboxes with names Microsoft invented, and you’re supposed to know which one is the Chat button. The developer behind NixThis, who publishes as Builtbybel (@builtbybel), hit the same wall. “They gave me 300 checkboxes and expected me to understand all of them,” the README says.

So the app flips the question around. “Point at the annoying thing, and it looks for the setting behind it.” Click Pick an element or press Ctrl+Shift+Space from anywhere, move your pointer over the offender, and NixThis draws a frame around it. A green frame means it knows the element. Click, read what it plans to change, and block it or leave it alone. NixThis eats that click, so you don’t accidentally launch the very button you’re trying to kill.

The trick underneath is Windows’ own accessibility plumbing. The picker “combines a global mouse hook with Windows UI Automation,” the README explains, and reads the element under the pointer with AutomationElement.FromPoint. One element alone rarely identifies a feature, so NixThis also climbs to its parents and collects the AutomationId, ClassName, visible name and owning process. That signature gets compared against the filter list, and “stable IDs are preferred because visible text changes with the Windows language.” The Windows 11 taskbar fights back a little: it “often reports only the taskbar itself,” so the app walks down the tree to find the real button.

What it changes is deliberately boring. “Most filters write one documented or well-known Windows registry value,” the README says, and NixThis “does not patch system files, disable random services, or run a giant mystery script behind an ‘Optimize’ button.” Each entry in Data/Filters.ini describes how an element is recognized, which setting sits behind it, what value blocks it and what restores it.

Undo is a first-class button. Under What you blocked, “Registry changes remember their previous value, so Bring it back restores exactly what was there before.” Removed Store apps are the one exception, since “Windows offers no real undo for an uninstall,” so NixThis opens the app’s Store page instead. Apps Windows needs, such as the Store, App Installer and the runtimes, are protected from removal.

Point at something it doesn’t know and you get a gray frame instead. Nothing changes; the element’s signature lands in a local Data/Sightings.log that the developer uses as raw material for new filters. The project’s release notes pitch it as “What uBlock does for websites, but for Windows itself,” and version 0.42 shipped October 4, when, by its own count, NixThis was “five days old.” There is one catch the README states plainly: “The first release is out, but the source is not published yet.” You’re running a binary from a repo whose code you can’t read, at least until the promised source arrives.

The uBlock comparison is apt, and it hints at where this could go. Ad blockers lived or died on their filter lists and the community that kept them current; NixThis is betting the same model works for an operating system that keeps inventing new places to put a suggestion. If the source lands and outside contributors start sending filters, it could become the default answer to “how do I turn that off.” If Microsoft keeps renaming its automation IDs every few builds, the list will be in a constant footrace. Whether that source shows up, and under what license, is the next thing to watch.