How do I disable user pictures? In Drupal 7, you can disable user pictures just by unchecking the appropriate box on the Config -> People screen.

How can I disable user pictures in Drupal 8?  I see that the default D8 install adds an image field user_picture at /admin/config/people/accounts/fields, but I assume that it would be better to somehow disable this than just to delete it.

For now, I don't want user pictures to be shown or used in any way, unless I decide to re-enable them later.
If you don't want to delete the field, you can exclude the field from input:

/admin/config/people/accounts/form-display


and from output:

/admin/config/people/accounts/display