How to enable Group Policy Editor in Windows 11 Home

Microsoft includes a useful tool called Group Policy Editor, commonly known as Gpedit.msc or just GPEDIT, with the Pro version of its Windows operating system. It is useful for enabling or disabling multi-item functions in the operating system, changing the registry values, but in a more user-friendly way. Unfortunately, Home Edition users don’t have access to this nifty tweaking utility. But there is a way to enable Group Policy Editor in Windows 11 Home.

Let me remind you that simply enabling the utility only allows you to access the GPEDIT console interface, it does not apply the changes for the policy settings (at least not for the ones I tried to modify). It’s still worth a try though, especially for the price of free, and the GUI definitely works.

Note: If you have Windows 11 Pro, don’t bother with this as you will already have the fully functional version of the tool.

How to enable Group Policy Editor in Windows 11 Home

1. Download the ZIP file from our website, extract it to a folder, and you will get a BAT file.

Or copy the code below and paste it into Notepad. Save the file with the .BAT extension as Script.BAT or GPEDIT.BAT, the name does not matter.

@echo off
pressed «% ~ dp0»

dir / b% SystemRoot% servicing Packages Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientExtensions-Package ~ 3 * .mum> List.txt
dir / b% SystemRoot% servicing Packages Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientTools-Package ~ 3 * .mum >> List.txt

para / f %% i en (‘findtr / i. List.txt 2 ^> nul’) hacer dism / online / norestart / add-package: «% SystemRoot% servicing Packages %% i»
pause

2. Right click on the BAT file and run it as administrator.

3. A command prompt window should open. This is the DISM command, which installs the relevant packages to enable GPEDIT on your computer. Wait for the process to complete, it may take a few seconds. You will know when it is ready when you see a message that says “Press any key to continue.”

4. Touch any key and the command window should close.

5. Click the Start button and type Gpedit.msc, and you should see the tool appear in the output, click it (or use the Run command with Win + R, followed by Gpedit.msc), and you can access the Group Policy Editor.

You do not need to restart your computer for the utility to appear, you may want to turn the system off and on again. If you try to modify a policy, but it doesn’t seem to be working, don’t be surprised. As I mentioned above, it is a bit hit and miss, the tool seems to work at times. There is no known workaround to enable functionality in Windows 11 Home or Windows 10 Home, aside from upgrading your OS to the Pro version, of course.

I recommend using the third-party program, Policy Plus, to make changes to the operating system. It is essentially the same as the Group Policy Editor, but with a slightly better interface.

Note that some antivirus programs detect it as a threat (I saw 4 detections on VirusTotal), these are not top AVs, and I’m pretty sure they are false positives. The tool is open source, so you can check the code if you are skeptical about it.

What do you use GPEDIT for? Share your favorite settings with us.

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