Windows 10 - Your phone - Add a phone - Disabled

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Solution 1

The grayed-out settings is not the place to go. You are looking for a Windows app.

Type "Phone" in the Windows menu
open the (windows inbuilt) Phone app
It will ask your phone number
Wait for the SMS (it will send you a link to download the "companion" app for your phone, you probably could just install it)
install the "companion" app on your phone
Scan the QR code (or just login with your windows ID)

Solution 2

I have the exact same issue. I found this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/9pdie4/gpo_that_blocks_access_to_link_phone_in_1809/

Depending on your version of Windows 10, you can either:

Edit the local Group Policy (i.e. gpedit.msc) to disable Turn off Microsoft consumer experiences in Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Cloud Content (I would also set the User Config local GP the same way) or...
Edit the DisableWindowsConsumerFeatures DWORD registry key (set it to 0): Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\CloudContent

11,089

Nathan

Nathan Reynolds is an Architect at Oracle and works in PSR (Performance, Scalability and Reliability), a team dedicated towards optimizing Oracle Middleware software. In this role, he oversees the technical aspects of analyzing profiles, figuring out optimizations, optimizing code and measuring performance impact. Since joining Oracle in 2002, he has worked only in the PSR team. He has a keen interest in concurrency and makes regular valuable contributions to the animated discussions on the concurrency-interest mailing list. After analyzing 650 heap dumps across Oracle workloads, he presented Java Memory Hogs which identifies the most important memory problems in the average Java program. He confers with Intel processor architects on how to make their processors run Oracle software faster as well as optimize Oracle software to take advantage of latest processor features. One project has him adding Intel’s TSX functionality into Oracle Business Intelligence. Mr. Reynolds holds a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Southern California and a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Brigham Young University. This multi-disciplined instruction allows him to deeply understand hardware ramifications when optimizing software.

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

Nathan almost 2 years

I am on Windows 10 Version 1809 Build 17763.316. I opened the Your phone settings page (click on Start Menu > Cog (Settings) > Phone). The Add a phone + button is greyed out. A message in red says Some settings are hidden or managed by your organization (see image below). How do I enable the Add a phone + button?
Nathan over 5 years

I set the local group policy. I could not find the user config local group policy. The add a phone option is stilled grayed out. I also set the registry key. The add a phone option is stilled grayed out. I rebooted. The add a phone option is stilled grayed out. Sadly, this answer does not work for me.
Nathan about 4 years

Thanks! The first step was all I needed. The rest of the steps did not match but the on-screen information was enough for me to figure it out.
Ian Renton over 3 years

Option 1 above worked for me without a restart. The registry key mentioned in option 2 did not already exist so I didn't create it. I assume therefore there are several ways in which this feature can end up disabled, so the answer will work for some and not others.