In simple terms, bloatware refers to any pre-installed software on your computer or device that you don't need or want. This type of software can slow down your device, reduce battery life, and take up valuable storage and memory. Some examples of bloatware include weather apps, financial apps, game centers, music and video players, and more.
Unfortunately, Windows 11 is no exception when it comes to bloatware. This operating system comes with a lot of pre-installed apps and services that can drain your system resources, including RAM, storage, and CPU utilization. Some of these apps may be useful to some users, but most of them are unnecessary and can cause your device to run slower.
Removing bloatware from your Windows 11 system is known as debloating. This process involves getting rid of most of the pre-installed apps that are hindering your system's performance. However, it can be challenging to uninstall some bloatware through the Settings or traditional Control Panel.
Thankfully, there are several ways to debloat your system, including using the traditional uninstall method, using command line commands, and using third-party debloaters. In this article, we will guide you through step-by-step instructions for debloating your Windows 11 PC and increasing the performance of your computer.
Install the Latest Updates on your Windows 11 PC
Before you start the debloating process, you need to make sure your pc is up to date with the latest Windows 11 updates and create a system restore point (in cases anything goes wrong).
To check for updates, first, open Windows Settings by clicking the Start menu and selecting the ‘Settings’ option or by pressing Windows+I.
In the Settings app, click the ‘Windows Update’ section at bottom of the left panel. Then, click the ‘Check for updates’ button on the right pane. If there are any updates available, let it download and install the files. Then, restart your pc if needed.
Create a Restore Point on Windows 11
It is always better to create to Windows restore point before debloating your Windows 11 system. If by chance, anything goes wrong and you mess up the system configurations or you don’t like some of the changes made, you can always revert back to the previous state using the restore point your created. Here’s how you can create a Windows Restore Point:
Click the Start menu, type ‘Create a restore point’, and select the best-matched result.
This will open the ‘System Properties’ control applet. Go to the ‘System Protection’ tab, select your system drive on which the OS is installed, and then click the ‘Configure’ button.
Then, select the radio button next to ‘Turn on system protection’, click on ‘Apply’, and select ‘OK’.
Once the system protection is turned on, you can now create manual restore points. Now, click the ‘Create’ button.
Type a name or description for your restore point and click the ‘Create’ button again.
Once the restore point is created, you’ll see a success message.
Remove Bloatware using Traditional Uninstall
You can always remove unwanted bloatware apps using the traditional uninstall option in the settings or control panel. However, you cannot remove all bloatware through this method and not all apps show up in the settings app for you to uninstall.
To uninstall through settings, open the Windows Settings app and go to ‘Apps’ on the left panel, and select the ‘Apps & features’ option from the right pane.
Then, find the unwanted app in the list of apps, click the three-dot menu button next to the app, and select ‘Uninstall’ to remove the app.
Hide/Remove Apps Using the ‘Remove-AppxPackage’ Command
Although it is easy to remove unwanted apps using the traditional uninstall method, you can’t uninstall all the built-in apps in your system. Windows doesn’t give you options to Uninstall many built-in apps such as Photos, Video Player, OneNote, Xbox, People, Camera, etc. For instance, if try to uninstall the ‘People’ app using the above method, the Uninstall option would be greyed out (inaccessible).
But you can use Get-AppxPackage and Remove-AppxPackage commands in PowerShell to get rid of all or specific built-in apps in Windows 11. These commands invoke Administrator privileges and Execution Policies to remove app packages.
This method doesn’t permanently remove the respective apps from your Windows 11 OS image, it simply uninstalls/hides them from your current account. If you create a new user account or log on to another account, you will find the apps are still there. You can also choose to remove the apps from all accounts, but if you create a new account, you will find the built-in apps there. If you use this method to uninstall apps, you can easily restore them later on if you want them back.
View the List of Pre-Loaded Apps
First, you need to open PowerShell as an administrator. To do that, search for ‘Windows PowerShell’ in the Windows search and select ‘Run as administrator’ for the result.
Before removing the apps, you might want to get a list of all pre-installed apps first. Type the following command in Powershell and press Enter to see the list of all the apps (on current user) along with detailed info regarding every single one:
Get-AppxPackage
To find the list of apps along with app info on a specific user account, use this command:
Get-AppXPackage -User <username>Where replace <username> with the user name of your account:
Get-AppXPackage -User Lavinya
To find the list of apps with app info on all user accounts, enter this command:
Get-AppxPackage -AllUsersIf you only want to see the name of the apps and the PackageFullNames which are the only information we need to remove an app, execute the following command. This will list only the Name and PackageFullName of the apps in two columns (for the current user) omitting other information:
Get-AppxPackage | Select Name, PackageFullName
To find the list of apps on a specific user account, use this command:
Get-AppXPackage -User <username> | Select Name, PackageFullNameWhere replace <username> with the user name of your account:
Get-AppXPackage -User Lavinya | Select Name, PackageFullName
To find the list of app names on all user accounts, type this command:
Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers | Select Name, PackageFullNameRemove Pre-Loaded Apps from Your System
Now, you can use both Get-AppxPackage and Remove-AppxPackage commands to hide or remove bloatware from your system.
To remove an app from your computer, run the following command:
Get-AppxPackage <AppName> | Remove-AppxPackageWhere replace <AppName> with the name of the app you want to remove:
Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.Xbox.TCUI | Remove-AppxPackage
You can also use wildcards (*) for the AppName parameter to write commands easily. Instead of typing the whole name of the app or package name, you can use wildcards to make commands easy to write. For instance, instead of typing the whole App such as ‘Microsoft.XboxApp’ for the app name parameter, you can just write this:
Get-AppxPackage *Xbox* | Remove-AppxPackageOR
Get-AppxPackage *XboxApp* | Remove-AppxPackage
The above command uninstalls ‘Xbox app’ from the current user account only.
To uninstall an app from any specific user account, use the following command:
Get-AppxPackage -user <AppName> | Remove-AppxPackageWhere <AppName> is the name of the app you want to remove:
Get-AppxPackage -user Robb *xbox* | Remove-AppxPackage
To uninstall an app from all user accounts, use the following command:
Get-AppxPackage -alluser Robb *xbox* | Remove-AppxPackage
Here is the list of the commands you can use to uninstall or hide the preloaded apps from your Windows 11 system.
Uninstall 3D Builder:
Get-AppxPackage *3dbuilder* | Remove-AppxPackageUninstall Sway:
Get-AppxPackage *sway* | remove-AppxPackageUninstall Alarms & Clock:
Get-AppxPackage *alarms* | Remove-AppxPackageUninstall Calculator:
Get-AppxPackage *calculator* | Remove-AppxPackageUninstall Calendar and Mail:
Get-AppxPackage *communicationsapps* | Remove-AppxPackageUninstall Get Office:
Get-AppxPackage *officehub* | Remove-AppxPackageUninstall Camera:
Get-AppxPackage *camera* | Remove-AppxPackageUninstall Skype:
Get-AppxPackage *skype* | Remove-AppxPackageUninstall Movies & TV:
Get-AppxPackage *zunevideo* | Remove-AppxPackage Uninstall Groove Music and Movies & TV apps together:
Get-AppxPackage *zune* | Remove-AppxPackage Uninstall Maps:
Get-AppxPackage *maps* | Remove-AppxPackageUninstall Microsoft Solitaire Collection:
Get-AppxPackage *solitaire* | Remove-AppxPackageUninstall Get Started:
Get-AppxPackage *getstarted* | Remove-AppxPackageUninstall Money:
Get-AppxPackage *bingfinance* | Remove-AppxPackageUninstall News:
Get-AppxPackage *bingnews* | Remove-AppxPackageUninstall Sports:
Get-AppxPackage *bingsports* | Remove-AppxPackageUninstall Weather:
Get-AppxPackage *bingweather* | Remove-AppxPackageUninstall Money, News, Sports, and Weather apps together:
Get-Appxpackage *bing* | Remove-AppxPackage Uninstall OneNote:
Get-AppxPackage *onenote* | Remove-AppxPackageUninstall People:
Get-AppxPackage *people* | Remove-AppxPackageUninstall Your Phone Companion:
Get-AppxPackage *yourphone* | Remove-AppxPackageUninstall Photos:
Get-AppxPackage *photos* | Remove-AppxPackageUninstall Microsoft Store:
Get-AppxPackage *windowsstore* | Remove-AppxPackageUninstall Voice Recorder:
Get-AppxPackage *soundrecorder* | Remove-AppxPackagIf you want to remove all pre-installed apps from the current user with a single command, then use the below command:
Get-AppxPackage | Remove-AppxPackageIf you want to remove all inbuilt / default apps (bloatware) from all user accounts on your computer, then use the following command:
Get-AppxPackage -allusers | Remove-AppxPackageTo remove all inbuilt apps from a specific user account, type this command:
Get-AppxPackage -user <Username> | Remove-AppxPackageThere’s are also a way you can remove all apps while keeping a few specific ones. You probably don’t want to remove all pre-installed apps from your Windows. In such cases, use the below commands:
To remove all apps while keeping a single app (e.g. Calculator), enter this command:
Get-AppxPackage | where-object {$_.name –notlike “*calculator*”} | Remove-AppxPackage
If you want to keep more than one apps, add a where-object {$_.name –notlike “*app_name*”} parameter in the command for each app you want to keep:
Get-AppxPackage | where-object {$_.name –notlike “*calculator*”} | where-object {$_.name –notlike “*store*”} | where-object {$_.name –notlike “*zune.music*”} | Remove-AppxPackageReinstall/Restore All Built-in Apps
As we mentioned earlier, if you want the preinstalled apps back, you can always reinstall them all with a single command. Make sure to run PowerShell in administrative mode, and enter the following command:
Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers| Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}
Removing Windows 11 Bloatware Using DISM
If you want to fully remove all the junk bloatware from your system, you can use the ‘DSIM’ command line, which stands for Deployment Imaging Service and Management in the PowerShell. It is a powerful diagnostic tool that can be used to repair and prepare Windows images. This method will permanently remove the bloatware from your Windows 11 OS image, which means they won’t be re-installed during the Windows update or when a new user account is created.
To run the DSIM command, first, open Windows PowerShell with administrative privileges.
In the PowerShell window, type or copy-paste the following command to view the entire spectrum of system bloatware:
DISM /Online /Get-ProvisionedAppxPackages | select-string Packagename
You would list of all installed packages, like this:
Among them, find an app or service you want to remove from your system entirely. Then, highlight and copy the Packagename for that app. Here, we’re selecting ‘GamingApp’.
Next, use the below command to get rid of the bloatware:
DISM /Online /Remove-ProvisionedAppxPackage /PackageName:PACKAGENAMEWhere replace the PACKAGENAME with the name of the package you want to remove (the package name you copied earlier):
DISM /Online /Remove-ProvisionedAppxPackage /PackageName:Microsoft.GamingApp_2109.1001.8.0_neutral_~_8wekyb3d8bbwe
This will completely remove the selected app from your system. Repeat the process until you have deleted all the apps you want to remove. This method completely removes the provisioned package from the OS image. Once you do this, you won’t be able to get them even when you create a new account. The only way you can get the removed apps back is through the Windows Store or manual installation.
Debloat Windows 11 Using Third-Party Debloaters
The above methods require you to write various commands or go hunting down each setting yourself through the control panel, settings app, or other tools to remove bloatware apps. But there’s an easy way you can use to debloat Windows 11 that is by using third-party debloater scripts.
They are basically PowerShell scripts that you run on Windows PowerShell to modify the settings of the Windows 11 operating system. There are plenty of debloat scripts available online which are often referred to as debloaters. In this tutorial, we will be using the debloaters called ‘ThisisWin11’ and ‘Windows10Debloater’.
Debloat Windows 11 with ThisIsWin11
ThisIsWin11 is a free unofficial optimization tool that you can use to customize and debloat Windows 11 operating system. You can find ThisisWin11 on the GitHub page. With this debloater tool, you can remove unwanted services and software that are slowing down your PC’s performance.
First, visit the GitHub ThisisWin11 page and select the green ‘Code’ button at the top left corner of the file list. Then, select the ‘Download ZIP’ option to save the file to your machine. You can also find the Download link at the bottom of the page.
Locate the file you just downloaded, then select it and click on the ‘Extract all’ button on the Ribbon of the File Explorer or right-click the file and select ‘Extract all’.
On the next window, choose where you want to extract the files or leave the default location which is the same folder as the zip file, and click the ‘Extract’ button.
The contents of the file will be extracted to a new folder with the same name. Open the folder and double-click the ‘ThisIsWin11.exe’ to launch the program. Then, click ‘Yes’ to User Access Control.
When the app opens, you’ll be greeted with the Home page which is also called the Presenter mode which allows you to configure and customize various Windows 11 settings. This app not only allows you to debloat the system but also customize and optimize your Windows 11 system.
You can click the arrow button in the bottom right corner to move between the pages or settings you want to change. Each page comes with a description, preview, and an option to change the setting. You can click the ‘Preview this page’ option to open the current relevant settings and the ‘Configure this page’ button to change it.
On the System tab, you enable and disable various settings and permissions on your system. Click the ‘Check’ button to view the list of every potential setting change. Then, toggle the options you want and click the ‘Fix issues’ button to apply the changes. Changing these settings may help boost your overall system performance.
Deleting Built-in Apps using ThisisWin11
The App tab is where you can really uninstall pre-installed apps (bloatware). It shows you an extensive list of apps that came installed with the operating system. You just have the select the apps you want to remove, add them to the Recycle bin pane, and click the ‘Empty Recycle Bin’ button to remove those apps.
You can either select them all or you can select specific apps and add them to the Recycle Bin. To add all the apps to the Bin, click the ‘Add all>>’ button in the middle. To add individual apps, select the app (Hold the Ctrl key while selecting to select multiple apps) and click the ‘App Selected>>’ button.
If you realize you don’t want to remove a certain app or want an app back, you can easily restore it from the Recycle bin by clicking the ‘<Restore All’ or ‘<<Restore Selected’ button.
If you’re not sure if you need an app or uninstalling certain services will cause issues on other parts of your OS, it’s better to leave it alone.
Once you selected all the apps you want to remove to the Recycle Bin, click the ‘Empty Recycle Bin’ button at the bottom of the window.
Then, it will prompt a confirmation box asking do you want to empty the bin and delete all the apps in it. Click ‘Yes’.
This will remove all the selected apps from your system.
Install Useful Apps Packages
Besides deleting apps, this tool also allows you to download and install a list of really useful software, such as 7-Zip, Oracle, TeamViewer, Zoom, VisualStudioCode, Steam, Zoom, Dotnet framework, and much more.
Go to the ‘Packages’ tab, check the boxes next to the apps you want to install, and click ‘Create Package’. Then, click the ‘Run Installer’ button to install those tools.
Automate Debloating using ThisisWin11
Another useful feature of this tool is that it allows you to automate various Windows important tasks including automatically removing default apps from your Windows 11 system.
In the Automate tab of the tool, you have options to install apps, reinstall all built-in apps, disable OneDrive, update store apps, disable various unnecessary Windows services, enable Ultimate Performace Mode power scheme, remove telemetry services, and disk clean services. These automated tasks can help you improve your system performance and efficiency.
In Automate tab, you can uninstall, default provisioned apps that are reinstalled during updates, or when a new user account is created. By removing provisioned apps, you will completely delete the bloatware from the OS image, which can only be reinstalled through Microsoft Store. To delete provisioned apps, select the ‘(Apps) Remove default apps (Provisioned)’ option and select the ‘Run this code on-the-fly’ button at the bottom right corner.
This opens a GUI window where you can select the apps you want to remove and click the ‘OK’ button at the lower right corner. To select multiple apps, press and hold the Ctrl key while selecting. Here, you can also add criteria to sort and search apps.
You can use the ‘Disable Services’ option in the Automate tasks to turn off unnecessary Windows bloat services.
Telemetry is another feature you can do without. Telemetry is the automatic recording and transmission of data that is used to improve customer experiences, security, quality, and performance. Besides Windows, third-party apps like Google Chrome, Firefox, Dropbox, and others use telemetry features. These services cause high CPU usage and privacy problems. So it is best to disable telemetry features on your system.
You can block and disable telemetry features by selecting the ‘Remove telemetry of third-party apps’ option. Also, the ‘Clean up Windows’ option can clear unnecessary files from your computer’s hard disk. To carry out multiple automated tasks together, select the tasks and click the ‘Apply selected’ button.
ThisIsWin11 is an all-in-one tool for optimizing, customizing, configuring, and debloating Windows 11.
Debloating Windows 11 using Windows10Debloater Script
Another debloater tool that comes in handy for removing various unwanted registry keys and preinstalled apps is the Windows10Debloater script developed by Sycnex. It can help remove bloatware and services that are slowing down your PC’s performance.
To start with visit the Windows10Debloater GitHub site. Then, click on the green ‘Code’ button and select ‘Download ZIP’.
Once the download is complete, locate the downloaded file and extract it. Right-click the zip file and select ‘Extract All’.
Next, open Windows PowerShell as administrator and run the following command:
Set-ExecutionPolicy UnrestrictedAnd type ‘y’ for the confirmation.
After that, open the extracted folder and you’ll find three script files. You can use any of the three scripts but it’s easy to use the script named ‘Windows10DebloaterGUI.ps1’ because it has a GUI with bloat removal and revert changes options. So, right-click on ‘Windows10DebloaterGUI.ps1’ file and select ‘Run with PowerShell’.
It will automatically run some script code on PowerShell and open a GUI window. If it doesn’t do that, do the following:
Right-click the ‘Windows10DebloaterGUI.ps1’ file, select ‘Open with’ and click ‘Notepad’.
This will open the script in a notepad. Now, press CTRL+A and then CTRL+C to copy the codes.
Then, ‘Paste’ the copied script in the Windows PowerShell window by pressing Ctrl+V. It will take a few seconds to finish pasting, then press Enter.
Either way, it will open up a GUI window as shown below. Here, you will see various options including remove bloatware, remove bloatware Registry keys, revert registry changes, disable OneDrive, Cortana, and more. You can use these options to make changes to Windows 11 PC.
You can click the ‘REMOVE ALL BLOATWARE’ button to uninstall all bloatware apps on your machine. This will run some script lines in Windows PowerShell, once it’s done all bloatware will be removed from the system. But it could also remove some pre-installed apps that you want to keep.
Or, you can click on the ‘CUSTOMISE BLOCKLIST’ button to customize the list of bloatware apps and services you want to keep and apps you want to remove.
In the Customize Allowlist and Blocklist window, you will see a list of default apps that came pre-installed with your Windows 11 system. Although this script is powerful enough to remove most of the bloatware, it cannot remove some of Windows’s important apps and services. You can see the ‘Non-Removable’ tag next to the apps (with unchecked boxes) that can’t be removed.
Besides those apps, you can delete all the bloatware apps on your system. By default, all other apps and services will be checked. All you have to do is uncheck the boxes next to the apps you want to keep (allow) and check the boxes next to the apps you want to remove (block).
Here, carefully make your selections. If you don’t recognize some of the apps and don’t know whether uninstalling them will cause some other functions to malfunction, then don’t select them.
You can also click the ‘Save custom Allowlist and Blocklist to custom-lists.ps1’ at the bottom of the window to save this customized list for future uses.
Once, you made your selection and deselection of the apps, close the Customize Allowlist and Blocklist window and click the ‘REMOVE BLOATWARE WITH CUSTOM BLOCKLIST’ button.
Once you do that, all the bloatware that are selected in the block list will be removed. To improve the performance of your system further, you can also disable OneDrive, telemetry services, Cortana, as well as bloatware registries. Finally, restart your PC for the changes to take effect.
That’s it.
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