In the good old days, uninstalling a program on a Windows PC meant going to the ‘Control Panel » Programs » Uninstall a program‘ menu. However, on Windows 10, you may have noticed that the Control Panel menu does not show all applications installed on your PC, especially the Apps and Games downloaded from the Microsoft Store.
The reason why the Control Panel uninstaller cannot find and uninstall Microsoft Store apps is because those apps are packaged in an .appx file, while the Control Panel uninstaller only supports .exe and .msi app packages.
Since Microsoft has been gradually doing away with the old-style Windows systems. The good ol’ Control Panel is also being replaced with the user-friendly ‘Settings’ menu in Windows 10, and the new Apps uninstaller in there supports uninstalling apps downloaded from any source.
Below are two ways to uninstall an app using the new features in Windows 10.
Quickly uninstall apps from the Start menu
The ‘Start’ menu is the swiss-army knife on a Windows 10 PC. It can launch apps, search apps, and even show information from apps (in Tiles). If you didn’t already guess, the ‘Start’ menu also lets you quickly uninstall apps on your PC.
To get using it, click on the Windows Start button and type the name of the App app you want to uninstall.
In the search results, right-click on the App and select ‘Uninstall’ from the available options.
A pop-up will show on the screen to confirm uninstalling of the app, click the ‘Uninstall’ button to confirm and uninstall the app.
Uninstall apps from Windows Settings
If the app you were looking to uninstall did not show in the Start menu search, you can uninstall it from the Windows Settings menu.
Open Start menu, and click on the ‘Settings’ gear icon.
Then on the Windows Settings screen, click on ‘Apps’.
On the Apps & features screen, scroll down and find the app you wish to uninstall. You could also use the Search box (right above the apps list) to search the app by its name. Or use the ‘Sort’ option to sort apps by ‘Install date’ if the app was only recently installed or updated.
Once you find the app you wish to uninstall, click on it once to see available options. Then click the ‘Uninstall’ button from the available options.
If you get a confirmation dialogue, click on the ‘Uninstall’ button again (on the pop-up) to confirm.
Conclusion
Uninstalling apps on a Windows PC is now a user-friendly process with Windows 10. You don’t need to go to the geeky ‘Control Panel’ menu anymore. The option to uninstall apps directly from the Start menu is as easy as it can get. And the Apps uninstaller in Windows Settings is fast and powerful enough with the ‘Search’ and ‘Sorting’ options.
Microsoft is gradually re-writing old Windows features into user-friendly menus of Windows 10, and the Apps uninstaller has genuinely gained from this transition.
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