Something You Should Know on Windows Defender Exclusions

Overview of Windows Defender

In Windows 10 operating system, an antivirus program is built-in and it is Windows Defender. It combines all the essential security features under one dashboard to protect your machine from viruses, spyware, malware, ransomware, rootkits and other security threats.

With it, your PC is under the protection. If you have installed any other antivirus program like Avast, Windows Defender is not turning on. In short, this utility is excellent enough.

Although this antivirus program does a pretty good job, it may detect the file, folder or a process/program you trust as malicious, which makes you agonizing. To stop it from alerting you or block this type of behavior from occurring, you can add Windows Defender exclusions.

This antivirus program includes an option to exclude files, folders, file types and processes that are scanned and blocked. In this post, we will walk you through how to add exclusions to Windows Defender to prevent from scanning specific items.

How to Add an Exception to Windows Defender

If you have some specific files, file types, folders and processes that you don’t want Windows Defender to scan, follow the step-by-step guide to exclude them from scans.

Step 1: Click the Start button and choose Settings from the menu.

Step 2: Choose Update & Security from the Windows Settings interface.

Step 3: Navigate to the Windows Defender section, then click Open Windows Defender Security Center.

Step 3: Click the Virus & threat protection section and then choose Virus & threat protection settings.

Step 4: Scroll down to find Exclusions, then click Add or remove exclusions option.

Step 5: Click the Add an exclusion button to add Windows 10 antivirus exclusions. Then, you need to choose the items you want to exclude from Windows Defender scans and follow the on-screen instructions to finish configuring Windows Defender exclusions.

• File: you can exclude only one file per exclusion.
• Folder: a folder and its content like sub-folders can be excluded.
• File type: you can let this antivirus program not scan files with a specific extension without considering their location.
• Process: After choosing this option, you are required to enter a process name to exclude the background process.

If the item is more than one, you should repeat certain steps to exclude other items. At any time, you can also remove exclusions.

The End

Right now, we have shown you how to add exclusions to Windows Defender to stop this program from scanning these items. Just follow the instructions above to do this job.