Edge and EdgeWebView huge size (5GB) And I don't even use it! Help please!

I'm a regular Edge user and the size is less than half you mention, and some of the locations don't exist on mine, or are half the size or less.

Go in to the Edge settings and Configure Edge, look for things that may require new processes and/or extra memory. Estimated several dozens of pages.
Every time there is a feature update do that again.

Similarly with Windows any related stuff to Browsers, of course that is reviewing hundreds of settings.

It must be reasonably easy as I'm just a consumer user.

I do not use system/OS mods or associated bloatware.

I have all of those files as well and I have had that script for some time, but I am not going to run it. It would be nice if The US and the rest of the world Did what the EU did.! MS is the largest monopoly in history and should be broken up in the same manner as AT&T was back in the 80's.

jen1 said:

I tried to uninstalled it and the edgeupdate, but out of the blue, and without my consent it will be installed again, I tried to disable edgeupdate, but it will be enabled again without my consent. So I am ignoring it now. Cause it will be installed again no matter what.

As I am operatiing lots of VMs, this browser is occupying hundreds of GBs.

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You don't need to give your consent for MS to reinstall anything. As already explained you DO NOT own your copy of Windows you simply license it off MS who own it who can, in theory, do whatever they like within the scope of the license agreement you agreed to when you installed and activated it.

jen1 said:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge About 700MB
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\EdgeCore About 1400MB
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\EdgeWebView About 700 MB and the same files as first folder
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\EdgeUpdate Will contain the installers and it is about 300MB

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If you checked properties, it does not show the actual size, you need to look for allocated size. For example mine shows as 2.50GB, but in reality it is only 784MB. The same files are linked over and over, properties count those files multiple times.

markw51 said:

You don't need to give your consent for MS to reinstall anything. As already explained you DO NOT own your copy of Windows you simply license it off MS who own it who can, in theory, do whatever they like within the scope of the license agreement you agreed to when you installed and activated it.

Click to expand...

Calm down Kim Jong Un.

TairikuOkami said:

If you checked properties, it does not show the actual size, you need to look for allocated size. For example mine shows as 2.50GB, but in reality it is only 784MB. The same files are linked over and over, properties count those files multiple times.

View attachment 83316

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Not sure if you are trying to fool us or fool yourself. Compressing files, esp files that keeps updated, will cause more disk usage and fragmented files, which will decrease the lifespan of you SSD dramatically!

antspants said:

I am almost 100% certain it will not come back. Here is my thread, the link is in the topmost post.

Big favour to ask regarding an Edge removal script reversal.

Hi 🙏 I successfully used a script from Github to remove Edge, it certainly worked, even with Windows updates it remains gone. Near the top of the script there are ## Helper references for reversing the script, but I don’t understand it, not even in the slightest. There seems to be no othe way...

www.elevenforum.com

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This script doesn't do anything special, it will just uninstall Edge and EdgeWebView, and remove apps that uses EdgeWebView. It will not remove Edge package from the system, so there still will be a copy of of EdgeWebView in the system32 ans WinSxS folders.

Tested in a VM. Not sure if it will prevents Edge from reinstalling. But I think it is nice to test such a script. thanks again,

jen1 said:

Not sure if you are trying to fool us or fool yourself. Compressing files, esp files that keeps updated, will cause more disk usage and fragmented files, which will decrease the lifespan of you SSD dramatically!

Click to expand...

Many Windows components are deployed as hard-linked files by design. That's a normal thing, even on Linux systems.

Explorer is a bit dumb, because it's not programmed to ignore counting the same hard-linked file in multiple places. It's never had that wisdom, and is why DISM /AnalyzeComponentStore exists to report the true on-disk sizes. Some non-Explorer filesystem tools will make that distinction and report a real capacity number.

Determine the Actual Size of the WinSxS Folder

Just see how aggressive Microsoft includes their Apps and services into Windows since Windows 10.

garlin said:

Many Windows components are deployed as hard-linked files by design. That's a normal thing, even on Linux systems.

Explorer is a bit dumb, because it's not programmed to ignore counting the same hard-linked file in multiple places. It's never had that wisdom, and is why DISM /AnalyzeComponentStore exists to report the true on-disk sizes. Some non-Explorer filesystem tools will make that distinction and report a real capacity number.

Determine the Actual Size of the WinSxS Folder

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It is not a hard link, it is a folder. Here is the icon for links

Edge, EdgeWebView and Edge Package are different versions most of the times, and there are no links between them.

You may try tiny11, a lightweight version of Windows 11.
It's a debloated Windows 11. stripped off unnecessary Windows bloatware. saves much PC hardware resources.

jen1 said:

It is not a hard link, it is a folder. Here is the icon for links View attachment 83531

Edge, EdgeWebView and Edge Package are different versions most of the times, and there are no links between them.

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That's a shortcut, not a hard link.

I'll quote from the MS docs link I provided, with emphasis:

Files in this folder might appear to be stored in more than one place in the operating system, but there's usually only one copy of the file and the rest of the copies are actually hard links. Some tools, such as the File Explorer, determine the size of directories without taking into account that the contained files might be hard linked, which might lead you to think that the WinSxS folder takes up more disk space than it really does.

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Just to clarify, YES when the two versions of EdgeView in the install image are DIFFERENT, they won't be hardlinked. But when the two versions are the same, they will be. The point is the there are two versions on purpose. The hardlinks do exist between the WinSxS reference copies and the installed target files.

glasskuter said:

@antspants My friend, I am surprised in you for doing that. I would have thought you would just disable Edge from startup. It won't run until you select co-pilot which activates an Edge background process..

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The OP is upset because all of the duplication uses a lot of disk space. I am not happy with this either because it increase the size of backups significantly. Just disabling it in startup doesn't help the disk space usage,

geneo said:

The OP is upset because all of the duplication uses a lot of disk space. I am not happy with this either because it increase the size of backups significantly. Just disabling it in startup doesn't help the disk space usage,

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Thank you!

Do you know what is so ironic. Edge takes lots of space and it is updated at least once a week if not more, and I don't use it.

While FireFox is only 200mb and it is updated once a month.