How to remove Windows 10 apps from Windows 10

Warning… this is a tip for intermediate to advanced Windows users. Please make sure you follow the instructions here exactly or you can really cause big problems with your computer. Remove apps you are sure you don’t want – don’t remove anything if you don’t know what it is.

In today’s project, we’re going to learn to use the Windows PowerShell. It’s like the command prompt on steroids. It’s more robust and more powerful – and it’s the only way to get rid of built-in Windows 10 apps you don’t want.

Keep in mind that most hard drives these days are quite large and if you’re removing an app because you don’t want it taking up space, it would be best to leave it; compared to the size of your hard drive the size of an app is small.

First things first. You need open Windows Power Shell with administrator privileges. Most of you should see PowerShell on the start menu or the advanced menu (Windows Key + x). If you see it in either place, right-click it and choose “Run as administrator”. If you don’t see PowerShell listed on your start menu, type PowerShell in your taskbar search. When it appears in the search results, right-click and choose “Run as Administrator”.

Above you can see that Windows PowerShell looks like the Windows Command Prompt. Most of you are familiar with the Command Prompt.

Once you have opened the command prompt with administrator privileges, you’ll need to bring up a list of all installed apps. You’ll need this list (and it will be a long one) in order to get the full package name of the app you want to uninstall.

You’ll need to paste the following command at the prompt (which looks like > ):

Get-AppxPackage -User username

Where it says “Username” you would put your Windows Username…mine is “Thunder” (ask EB why) — see below:

If you typed all that right, you’ll get a list of all the Windows 10 apps on your computer – and it’s quite a ponderous list.

For the purposes of this tutorial, I’m going to uninstall a Windows 10 app that came pre-installed on my computer that I seldom use – it’s called Flipboard. That’s what it is called but that’s not its full package name on Windows. You will need the  full package name to remove it from your computer though. So I recommend at this point, if you’re planning on removing more than one app, that you open a text file (Notepad is just fine) and go through this list and highlight and copy the full package name of each app you want to remove and paste it in a text file that you can leave open on your desktop. (The easiest way to open Notepad, unless you have a shortcut for it on your start menu or desktop (etc.) is to press the Windows Key + R and type notepad and press Enter).

Copying the full package name from the PowerShell list is pretty easy – highlight the “PackageFullName” and right-click on the PowerShell title bar, choose Edit and then press Copy (or just press Enter) to copy the PackageFullName to the Clipboard. If you’re removing more than one app, then paste the PackageFullName to the notepad.  Go through the ponderous list of apps, copying the PackFullName of every app you want to remove and pasting it in your Notepad file.

When you have gone through the entire list of apps and you have selected all of the apps you want to remove and pasted their “PackageFullName” into your Notepad file, open a new PowerShell with Administrator privileges.

At the prompt type

Remove-AppxPackage [App Package Name]

Where it says [App Package Name] you paste the PackageFullName you copied from your Notepad file (or from the list of apps in PowerShell). Remove [App Package Name] and then right-click on the PowerShell titlebar and chose Edit —>Paste. See the image above. Notice that the FullPackageName is pasted after Remove-AppxPackage . After you’ve done this, press ENTER and you’ll see a it processing for a minute or two then a new prompt will appear beneath the first one. If you have more apps you want to remove, repeat the same steps pasting the FullPackageName of the next app you want to remove ….

One final word of caution. Be VERY careful which apps you remove. We tested this by using an app called Flipboard. We knew that removing Flipboard would not cause any problems with Windows. But in the list of apps you’ll see like the .NET  native framework and these should NEVER be removed. If you’re not sure, leave it alone. If you don’t know what an app is or what it does, leave it alone.