We have all been victim to finding our new PC bloated with so-called trial software more often called “crapware”. Generally speaking these are easy to remove using the “Programs and Features” applet in Control Panel. On the other hand, “Modern” or “Metro” apps can be another story. Even from a clean install, I found many apps in Windows 10 that I would rather not have on my computer. Some, like Xbox, were easy to uninstall, just right click on the app in the All Programs list and pick uninstall from the context list. Poof! It’s gone.
However, there are others, like Groove Music, that have no uninstall option. I’m never going to use that app no matter how groovy the music might be; so how to remove it? This article from Into Windows, explains the nuclear option to do this in Windows 10 – the Windows PowerShell. We will not go into the details of PowerShell other than to say it is a command line tool that has direct access to the guts of Windows. On the scale of harm you can inadvertently do, PowerShell ranks just below editing the Windows Registry with regedit.exe or reg32edt.exe, so be careful and follow directions exactly.
Using this method, I was able to remove several default apps that I would never use. On the other hand, this website, Into Windows, has a lot of useful information on Windows 7, 8 and 10. Read more…