SmartScreen is designed to automatically block suspicious files, but it often flags genuine downloads as malicious. Here's how you can disable Windows Defender SmartScreen on Windows 11 to ...

Microsoft Defender SmartScreen is a Windows security tool that helps protect your PC from online threats such as malware downloads and installation, phishing attempts, and malicious websites.

If you'd like to disable Windows Defender in Vista—perhaps you've got another spyware system that works better— tech blog Nuts and Milk has a dead simple tutorial on how to accomplish this ...

Although not recommended, SmartScreen can be disabled through Windows Defender. If you must completely disable SmartScreen, we recommend re-enabling it soon after.

Windows Defender setting In Windows Defender, you can also change Edge's SmartScreen to merely warn you when you are about to download a file it deems suspicious instead of it outright blocking it.