Bloatware is a term used to refer to all those “filler” programs that are not essential and that usually appear in your operating system only for commercial reasons. In the case of Windows 10 and Windows 11, we find the most obvious examples of this type of practice in games such as “Candy Crush Saga” or “World of Warships”, which are already pre-installed as standard in the system.
The positive part of all this is that most of the bloatware in Windows can be uninstalled from the control panel without too much hassle. But be careful, because there are also many other programs that come pre-installed from the factory that you cannot delete in the normal way.
How to uninstall pre-installed apps in Windows 10/11 using PowerShell
If you already have an email client like Thunderbird installed, you may not need the “Mail and Calendar” program at all, which is included as standard in both Windows 10 and Windows 11. And if you don’t have virtual reality glasses, you probably won’t need the program either “Mixed Reality Portal”. The same can be said of the Xbox programs.
The problem with these types of pre-installed programs is that some simply cannot be uninstalled like other programs from the “Add or remove programs” panel. The “Uninstall” option is simply not available.
Luckily, you can uninstall these kinds of apps by opening a terminal window and using a couple of PowerShell commands.
Warning: Keep in mind that not all pre-installed applications are bloatware. Many of them have critical functions for the system and removing them may affect the proper functioning of the PC. Back up Windows and all your important files as a precaution before proceeding further.
Steps to Follow
- Open Windows Finder on the taskbar (or press the Windows key on your keyboard) and type “PowerShell.”
- In the best match result, right-click on “Windows PowerShell” and select “Run as administrator”.
Inside the terminal window run the following command:
- Get-AppxPackage -User username (where “ username ” corresponds to the name of the user with which you have logged into the computer. You can also indicate the name of any other user registered in the system)
This command will show you a list of all the applications that are installed on the system and that are available to the user that you have just entered. Locate the program you want to uninstall and note the name of the application listed in the “ PackageFullName ” field.
Now run the following command:
- Remove-AppxPackage PackageFullName (where “ PackageFullName” corresponds to the name of the application noted in the previous step)
If everything has gone well, you will see a message that appears on the screen for a moment and then disappears. Now, if you go to the control panel to “Add or remove programs” you will see that the application is no longer listed and that it has indeed been uninstalled from the system.
It must be said in favor of Microsoft that there are fewer programs that have uninstall blocked in the control panel. In any case, if you want to uninstall them this is the easiest way to do it using a Powershell terminal window.
