How-To: Stop Windows 10 (1607) from installing unwanted apps

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With the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, Microsoft added a new feature to the Content Delivery Manager, a component of the OS which is also used for Windows Spotlight and app suggestions.
It now appears to silently install new apps for you without asking for any kind of confirmation.

After I spotted a few new apps after upgrading to the Anniversary Update (not immediately, a few hours later), I decided to take a closer look at this.
I clean installed Windows 10 Version 1607 inside a virtual machine and left it running for a couple hours. As expected, a few new apps appeared.
Some of them were Adobe Photoshop Express, Asphalt 8: Airborne, FarmVille, Netflix and PicsArt. Those were all installed without any confirmation. I would like to note that this also happens when there is no Microsoft Account used on the machine.

So, how did I stop this?

It’s actually quite simple.
First, open the Registry Editor. The simplest way to do so is to open Start, type ‘regedit’ and press Enter.

Next, you want to navigate to the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ContentDeliveryManager

There, you want to double click on SilentInstalledAppsEnabled and set the value to 0

Once that’s done, you can close the Registry Editor.