And we must bear in mind that some of the more advanced functions of the Redmond operating system are not available in the Home edition. That is not to say that those group directives are unnecessary, far from it, but we only find them in the pro edition or Enterprise of Windows 10. But of course, it may be the case that at a certain moment we need to use this directive editor, without being able to do so.
What is the usefulness of the Group Policy editor
At this point, the first thing to know is that this Windows Group Policy editor is a powerful tool integrated into the aforementioned advanced editions. We access it by opening an execution window through the Win + R key combination, and typing the command gpedit.msc. As we mentioned, if we try to do this on Home, an error will appear on the screen.
Well, if we have the Pro edition of the software, when executing this command a new window will appear. In it we will see a good number of entries with which we have the possibility to modify many hidden and semi-hidden options of the operating system.
But as we mentioned, in the event that we have a Windows 10 Home, in principle this will not be possible. That’s by default, but we can always turn to third-party solutions, as we’ll see. Therefore, in case you need it and do not have access to the group policy editor, below we will see how to get it in the home version of the system.
Access Group Policies in the Home edition of Windows
In fact at this time we could say that the majority of Windows 10 users They have the Home edition of the system. That is why as we gain experience in the software, we will probably miss having more control of it. That is why in the event that we need, for whatever reason, to have access to the editor of the local group policies, we will not be able at first.
But along these lines we are going to help you achieve it, as we will see. For this that we tell you what we are going to do is use a third-party program totally independent of Windows. Thus, in order to add this functionality in Windows 10 Home, we will talk about the application called Policy Plus. It is actually a free and portable program that we run on the system whenever we need it. We just have to download the same from this link.
After downloading it, as we mentioned, all we need is to run it directly, since it does not even need to be installed on the PC. Something that we should also know is that the local group policy editor is a complement to Microsoft Management Console or MMC. This is an element that allows us to configure and modify group policy settings for various users and computers on a network. In this way, just by accessing the editor we are talking about here, we can make changes and adjust certain settings or configurations that are not accessible from the Settings application or the Control Panel.
Get Policy Plus up and running on Windows
Policy Plus allows us to easily and quickly open and modify these local group policies in the Home editions of Windows from a single window. At the same time it is also true that some of these adjustments that we make from this editor can be achieved through some modifications in the Windows registry. But of course, as we have commented on many occasions, touch and change the record it has its risks. Especially if we do not know exactly what we are doing, so opening Policy Plus will help us avoid them.
Once we put the program into operation as such, say that this is an independent application that shows us the list of Windows group policies. What’s more, having it on the screen, we immediately realize that it offers us an interface very similar to that of the original Local Group Policy Editor itself.
Search Policy Plus
Once we have all this at hand, we can make use of this editor in Windows 10 Home as if we had the Pro edition. This is something that we can carry out and navigate through the use policies through the list on the left sidebar. But we can also make use of the search function that this application offers us.
It is worth mentioning that here we are going to find a powerful search engine that greatly facilitates the location of what we want to configure. And it is interesting to know that these searches to which we refer from Policy Plus can be done by ID, registry entry or text. If we want to access this functionality, we just have to go to the Find menu of the main interface
In this way, once we have found that editor entry that we want to modify, to interact with it we do it almost the same as in the original. With this, what we want to tell you is that we do it by double clicking on mouse in the desired group policy.
In short, this is a program, Policy Plus, that allows us to open and modify local group policies in the Windows Home editions. This actually saves us from having to use the dangerous system registry, especially for more inexperienced users.
