How to Find and Remove Bloatware from Windows (October 2026)

To find and remove bloatware from Windows, open Settings > Apps > Installed apps, sort the list by date or size, and uninstall the apps you never asked for. Anything the normal uninstaller will not touch — most bundled games, trials and vendor helpers — comes out with a short PowerShell command or an open-source debloater, and you should create a system restore point before either route.

The whole job takes about 20 minutes on a machine that has never been cleaned. The slow part is not the removal, it is working out what is genuinely junk and what the machine needs to keep running properly.

This guide covers Windows 11 and Windows 10 on retail laptops and desktops from Dell, HP, Lenovo, ASUS and Acer, plus a fresh install on your own hardware. Menu paths differ slightly between the two versions of Windows, so I have called out where.

Table of Contents

• What You Need
• Create a restore point first
• Know which Windows build you are running
• Open the two screens you will actually use
• Know when admin rights are required
• Step-by-Step: How to Find and Remove Bloatware from Windows
• 1. Identify What Counts as Bloatware
• 2. Review Installed Apps and Sort by Size to Find Bloatware
• OEM-specific bloatware and where it lives
• 3. Uninstall Bloatware the Supported Way
• 4. Use PowerShell for Known Windows Apps
• Automated debloaters, and how to run one safely
• 5. Remove Startup and Background Bloatware
• 6. Check What Remains and Repair Windows
• Common Mistakes
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Is Windows 11 still full of bloatware in 2026?
• What is the best bloatware remover for Windows 11?
• Is Chris Titus WinUtil safe to run?
• How do I remove Dell or HP bloatware from Windows 11?
• Will removing bloatware break Microsoft Store or Windows Update?
• Does debloating Windows 11 actually speed it up?

What You Need

You need roughly half an hour, a working internet connection, and the admin password for the account on the machine. Nothing else. No third-party download is required for the manual route, which is the one I would start with.

Create a restore point first

This is the single step people skip, and it is the reason a bad debloat becomes a bad afternoon. Windows only keeps restore points by default on some editions, so check that system protection is switched on.

Search for Create a restore point in the Start menu, open it, choose your system drive from the dropdown, then select Configure and tick Enable system protection. Confirm with OK. Back on the main tab, select Create a restore point, name it something like “Before debloat”, and wait a few seconds for it to finish.

On Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2 the System Protection tab still exists in that dialog. If you cannot see the Configure button, system protection is already on and you can skip straight to creating the point.

Know which Windows build you are running

Go to Settings > System > About > Windows specifications and note the Edition, Version and OS build. Debloaters check the build before running and will refuse to apply changes on an unsupported one, so knowing the number saves you guessing later.

Windows 10 reached end of support in October 2025, so if this is a Windows 10 machine it no longer receives security updates. That matters for the decision at the end: a clean install of a supported release fixes both the bloat and the security gap in one move.

Open the two screens you will actually use

The inventory screen is Settings > Apps > Installed apps on Windows 11, and Settings > Apps > Apps & features on Windows 10. It lists every classic program and every Store app with an uninstaller, with a sort dropdown above the list.

The second screen is Task Manager > Startup apps (Startup on Windows 10). It tells you what launches on sign-in and, in the Startup impact column, what that costs you in startup time. Much of what people call bloat shows up here even when the app itself is already gone.

Know when admin rights are required

Removing an app through Settings never needs elevation. Removing a provisioned package with Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage does, as does running any debloater that edits the registry or applies system-wide tweaks. Right-click Windows Terminal or PowerShell and choose Run as administrator when you reach step 4.

If the PC is managed by a school or employer, stop and ask IT first. Group Policy reinstalls and re-enables what you removed, and a device under management is not yours to modify.

Step-by-Step: How to Find and Remove Bloatware from Windows

1. Identify What Counts as Bloatware

Bloatware is software sitting on a new PC that the manufacturer added for revenue rather than usefulness. It is not a security term and it is not malware, which is exactly why it survives on machines handed to ordinary buyers.

The usual categories on a retail Windows 11 machine:

• OEM assistants and support tools — Dell SupportAssist, Dell Digital Delivery, HP Support Assistant, HP Privacy Assistant, Lenovo Vantage and Commercial Vantage, MyASUS and Armoury Crate, AcerSense. Some of these are genuinely useful for driver updates, which is why the removal section below treats them individually.
• Trial security software — a 30-day antivirus or PC-cleanup trial that starts nagging on day 14. Legitimate installers, permanent nuisances.
• Bundled games and entertainment — Solitaire, Clipchamp, Candy Crush, the Xbox app, Disney+ and Prime Video shortcuts, plus the promotions they push into Start.
• Vendor extras — a third-party archiver or PDF reader sitting next to the built-in one, a “PC Manager” that duplicates Settings, and the McAfee or Norton shell extensions loaded into Edge and Chrome.
• Windows’ own ads and tracking — suggested apps in Start, tips in Settings, web results in the Start search box, and diagnostic data collection. These are not programs you can uninstall, but every one of them has a setting.

Now the part that stops damage. These are not bloatware, whatever their names suggest:

• Microsoft Store — without it, no app you install from a package source will update.
• Edge WebView2 Runtime — many third-party apps embed it, and apps you already use may silently stop rendering.
• App Installer (which brings winget) — remove it and you lose the modern command-line package manager.
• Windows Update, Windows Security, Microsoft Defender, and every driver your hardware needs.
• The Calculator, Photos, Notepad and Clock apps if you use them — they are small, and the ones people actually miss are Windows’ default handlers for file types.

One useful distinction while you are deciding. Bloatware is preinstalled. A potentially unwanted program is something that arrived later, usually bundled with a free download, and a browser hijacker is malware that has already changed your default search engine and homepage. If you suspect the third category, an anti-malware scan is the correct first move, not a debloat.

2. Review Installed Apps and Sort by Size to Find Bloatware

Open Installed apps and click the sort dropdown. Sorting by Date installed clusters the manufacturer additions together, because they were laid down in the same finalisation step. Sorting by Size surfaces the trial suites and the media libraries.

Three details on this screen tell you what you are looking at. The Installed date column shows whether an app came with the machine or later. The Size figure is reported by the installer, so treat it as a hint rather than a measurement. And the three-dot menu on each row tells you whether an Advanced options submenu exists — the presence of a submenu is the clue that an app registered itself properly, while its absence is the clue that removal needs another route.

Two read-only PowerShell commands give you a complete picture, including the apps Settings hides. Open Windows Terminal, no admin rights needed:

Get-AppxPackage | Select-Object Name, PackageFullName, InstallLocation | Sort-Object Name | Out-File -Encoding utf8 "$env:USERPROFILEDesktopappx-inventory.txt"

This writes every Appx package registered for your account to a text file on the desktop, sorted alphabetically. Nothing is changed. It is the fastest way to spot a package family you recognise as junk, and the file is the record you compare against after removal.

The startup equivalent covers programs that run at sign-in, including entries no settings screen shows:

Get-CimInstance Win32_StartupCommand | Select-Object Name, Command, Location | Format-List | Out-File -Encoding utf8 "$env:USERPROFILEDesktopstartup-inventory.txt"

Read both files before removing anything. If a name is unfamiliar, search for it and read what it does before you decide — the point of this step is an informed list, not a fast one.

OEM-specific bloatware and where it lives

Vendor helpers often spawn several separate entries, which is why removing one at a time feels endless. Vendor paths differ:

• Dell — Installed apps, then remove Dell SupportAssist, SupportAssist OS Recovery Software and Dell Digital Delivery in that order. Uninstalling the first can leave the others behind, so re-sort by date afterwards. Dell also installs the SupportAssist OS Recovery tool that many people mistake for Windows recovery.
• HP — HP Support Assistant and HP Privacy Assistant, then HP Wolf Security if present. The HP Support Assistant uninstaller sometimes leaves a scheduled task; check Task Manager > Startup apps afterwards.
• Lenovo — Lenovo Vantage plus Commercial Vantage on business machines, and Legion Zone on gaming models. Legions use Legion Zone for fan and performance profiles, so keep it if you rely on the performance modes.
• ASUS — ASUS Smart Gesture, MyASUS and Armoury Crate. Armoury Crate and MyASUS share components, and removing Armoury Crate first can take MyASUS’ battery charging limits with it.

Does removing these void the warranty? No. It does mean you lose the vendor’s automatic driver downloads and, on some models, the battery charge limit feature. Take a screenshot of any settings you rely on before you uninstall.

3. Uninstall Bloatware the Supported Way

This is the lowest-risk route and it should handle most of what you found. Click the row for the app in Installed apps, open its three-dot menu, choose Uninstall, and confirm. Wait for the progress bar under the row to finish before starting the next one.

On Windows 11 the layout is list-and-menu. On Windows 10 you often get a blue Uninstall button on the left of each tile instead, and some entries show a Modify option that only changes what is installed rather than removing it.

Your verification point: the row is gone from Installed apps once the removal completes. If it is still there after a restart, the uninstaller failed silently, and you should stop trying that route and use PowerShell or a dedicated uninstaller instead.

Three situations call for a different approach:

• No Uninstall option at all. A Store app that has no visible uninstaller button, or one whose menu only offers Advanced options. Take the package name from step 2 and remove it with PowerShell in step 4.
• The uninstaller fails or the entry survives. OEM apps are notorious for this. Bulk Crap Uninstaller and Revo both scan for leftover files and registry entries after a failed uninstall and are the standard answer in the forums. Set your preference for leftover detection to “very thorough” and check the list it shows before deleting.
• It is gone but something still runs at startup. The app was removed and its background task survived. Handle that in step 5.

4. Use PowerShell for Known Windows Apps

PowerShell removes the apps whose uninstallers are missing or broken. The pattern that matters is preview first, remove second. Never skip the preview line.

Start with a read-only preview, using xbox as the filter as an example. Swap in whatever pattern you want:

Get-AppxPackage *xbox*

Read the output before acting. If the list matches what you expected, remove it for your account:

Get-AppxPackage *xbox* | Remove-AppxPackage

That removes the packages for the signed-in user only. To stop the app coming back for new profiles, strip it from the OS image instead:

Get-AppxProvisionedPackage -Online | Where-Object DisplayName -like '*Xbox*'

Preview that list the same way, then remove the matching entries with an elevated prompt:

Get-AppxProvisionedPackage -Online | Where-Object DisplayName -like '*Xbox*' | Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -Online

This is the step most guides gloss over and the reason bloat reappears months later. An Appx package you uninstall from Settings is removed from your profile only; the copy in the OS image stays, so the next account created on that PC — or a new profile your machine creates after an update — gets it again.

Never pipe an unfiltered command into Remove-AppxPackage. Something like Get-AppxPackage | Remove-AppxPackage takes every Store app with your account, including ones other software depends on, and the wildcard version has a habit of matching packages you did not intend. Filter, preview, then act on the names you saw.

If your execution policy blocks a downloaded script, scope the bypass to that one process rather than the machine:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted -Scope Process

That change vanishes the moment you close the window, which is the behaviour you want.

Automated debloaters, and how to run one safely

Two open-source projects dominate this space. Win11Debloat (official repository Raphire/Win11Debloat) focuses on removing apps, disabling background services and applying privacy tweaks, and writes an undo file for what it changes. Chris Titus Tech’s WinUtil (ChrisTitusTech/winutil) is broader: it also handles Windows installation, updates and feature toggles, with a Micro Win tag that does the debloat portion.

Download the script from the repository into a folder you can inspect, open it in a text editor, and read it before you run it. A debloater is a PowerShell script that edits the registry and removes packages; there is no reason to execute code you have not looked at.

The one-liner you will see in video comments and forum threads looks like this:

& ([scriptblock]::Create((irm https://debloat.raphi.re/)))

Token by token: irm downloads the script text from that URL, [scriptblock]::Create() turns the downloaded text into executable code, and the & runs it. In other words it fetches whatever the server returns at that moment and runs it with your permissions, with nothing pinned and nothing to review first. Download and read instead.

One more warning. Look-alike sites impersonate these projects, and forum threads about typosquatted downloads recur often. Go to the GitHub repository from the project’s own documentation, check the repository name exactly, and be suspicious of any download served from a file-hosting domain rather than the release page.

Approach	Effort	Risk	Rollback
Settings uninstall	10-20 min	Very low	Reinstall from the Store
PowerShell, named packages	20-30 min	Low with a filter	Store reinstall, system restore
Win11Debloat	10 min	Low to medium	Undo regfile and restore point
WinUtil Micro Win	10-15 min	Medium	Restore point, manual tweaks
Clean install from a Microsoft ISO	2-3 hours	High effort, low risk	Reinstall your files from backup

If your machine is already in the state Windows Update leaves it in, that last row is the real answer. A clean install from an official Microsoft ISO gives you a system with no vendor software at all, which no amount of removal fully matches. Choose English (World) as the install language to skip the language-prompt bloat, and do not use your manufacturer’s recovery partition for it.

5. Remove Startup and Background Bloatware

Uninstalling an app and stopping it running at sign-in are different jobs. Plenty of bloat is already gone from Installed apps while still launching three background processes every morning.

Open Task Manager > Startup apps. The Startup impact column shows measured cost: High impact entries are worth disabling even if you plan to keep the app. Right-click an entry to disable it, or select it and use the Disable button on the Processes tab. The entry stays installed and keeps its data — you can re-enable it in one click.

On Windows 11 the same switches live at Settings > Apps > Startup. On Windows 10, startup entries appear inside the Apps & features list. Either path edits the same Task Scheduler entries, so pick whichever you find faster.

For Store apps that are installed but have no business running: Settings > Apps > Advanced apps settings > Background apps, then choose Never. Be aware this is an all-or-nothing switch on current builds; there is no per-app list to work through.

Now the Windows-internal items, which no uninstaller reaches:

• Settings > Privacy & security > Diagnostics & feedback — set Optional diagnostics to the required level and turn off the others.
• Settings > Privacy & security > General — turn off Let apps show me suggested content in the Start menu, Show me suggested content in Settings, and Show me suggested content in Windows Spotlight.
• Settings > Privacy & security > Advertising — the three toggles under Let apps use advertising ID. Clearing this stops the personalised ad surfaces.
• Settings > System > Taskbar > Taskbar items — Search, Task View, Widgets and Copilot each toggle here. Widgets is the one that also keeps a background service alive.
• Settings > Privacy & security > Windows Copilot — turn Copilot off if you do not use it.
• Settings > Privacy & security > Recall & snapshots — on a Copilot+ PC this can be disabled without removing Copilot entirely. If your PC is not Copilot+ capable, the toggle is absent, which is normal.

Explain the three states properly, because people conflate them: disabled means the app is installed and can be re-enabled in a click; uninstalled means the package is removed and reinstalling it takes a Store download; deleted means you removed its files by hand, which is the one that breaks. Only the first two are reversible in a predictable way.

6. Check What Remains and Repair Windows

Re-run the two inventory commands from step 2 and open Task Manager > Startup apps again. That comparison is your real before-and-after record, and it takes ten seconds.

Then look at optional features. Windows components that no longer have a Settings entry live here:

Get-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online | Where-Object State -eq 'Enabled' | Select-Object FeatureName

Anything disabled from here needs an elevated prompt and a restart. This is where legacy media features and old Windows Media Player entries usually sit. If you stream or convert media, leave the relevant feature enabled — removing it takes the codec with it.

Repairing what a too-aggressive removal broke:

wsreset.exe

Run that from Start and it clears the Store cache, re-registers packages and resets the app. Give it a minute; the window stays blank while it works. If Start search still returns nothing after a restart, Settings > Apps > Installed apps > Microsoft Store > Advanced options > Repair, then Reset.

For a damaged system file or an update component:

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
sfc /scannow

Run DISM first, then sfc, both from an elevated prompt. DISM repairs the component store from Windows Update or a Windows ISO; sfc then replaces individual files using that repaired source. Windows Update breaking after a debloat is nearly always a Store or App Installer removal, and reinstalling those two from the Store fixes it.

Finally, measure honestly so you know whether the work paid off. Note your boot time, idle memory and disk usage in Task Manager before you start, then again a few days later. For a stricter number, Event Viewer under Applications and Services Logs > Microsoft > Windows > Diagnostics-Performance logs boot duration as Event ID 100 — average three boots, because a single run measures a cold start, not your experience.

Symptom	Likely cause	Fix
Store will not open or install apps	Microsoft Store removed, or its cache corrupted	Run wsreset.exe; if Store is missing, reinstall it from the Microsoft Store page or the Windows 11 ISO
Start search returns no results	Search index or a removed package the shell depended on	Restart Windows Search in Task Manager; run sfc /scannow
Windows Update fails to install	App Installer or a servicing component removed	Reinstall App Installer from the Store, then run DISM RestoreHealth
An app shows “managed by your organisation”	Group Policy re-applying settings	Check edge://policy or gpresult /h; this is an IT policy, not something you should override
A third-party app renders blank or will not open	Edge WebView2 Runtime removed	Reinstall the WebView2 Runtime from its developer site
Removed apps return after a major update	Provisioned package still in the OS image	Remove it with Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -Online

Common Mistakes

Deleting folders by hand in C:Windows, Program Files or WinSxS. These are not uninstall targets. Manual deletion breaks file permissions, breaks servicing, and Windows Update will reinstall or fail because of it. Use an uninstaller or an Appx cmdlet, never a file manager.

Removing drivers and system components. Anything from Intel, NVIDIA, AMD, Realtek or your laptop vendor that appears in Installed apps is hardware support, not bloat. Removing an OEM assistant is a choice; removing its driver is a downgrade to a machine with no graphics acceleration or no keyboard backlight.

Running broad wildcard commands. Get-AppxPackage * | Remove-AppxPackage and similar catch patterns you have not reviewed. The preview line exists precisely so you see the matches before anything is removed, and the one extra command costs two seconds.

Confusing disabled with removed. A disabled startup entry still occupies disk space and still appears in the app list. If your goal is a clean list, uninstall it. If your goal is a fast boot, disabling is enough — know which one you are chasing.

Skipping the restore point. System Restore does not reliably undo app removals, but it does undo the registry edits, service changes and provisioned-package changes that debloaters make — which is where most breakage lives. Ninety seconds to create, and it has saved more machines than any other step in this guide.

Deleting app data before the uninstall finishes. App data for Store packages lives under %LOCALAPPDATA%Packages. Deleting a folder there while Windows is still writing to it leaves a half-removed package that fails to reinstall cleanly. Let the uninstaller finish, reboot, then look at what remains.

Debloating a managed PC. Policy re-enables your changes, and some configurations will lock you out of the settings you just edited. Check with IT first.

Frequently Asked Questions

Start with the restore point, then work through Installed apps and remove what you recognise. That covers most machines in a single sitting, and it is the route you can undo without thinking about it. Move to PowerShell only for the named packages Settings will not touch, use Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage if you want the cleanup to stick for new user accounts, and measure the result before deciding whether to go further with a debloater or a clean install.