Has anyone looked at C:\Program Files\WindowsApps?

The problem is that even when you uninstall apps like Weather, store will keep some of their files like Steam does, in case you want to reinstall to save the bandwidth. Some will not even show up, like MSI Center taking 636MB, making backups unnecessarily bigger.

TairikuOkami said:

The problem is that even when you uninstall apps like Weather, store will keep some of their files

Click to expand...

Not here. Just removed a few packages like weather, widgets, cortana, mail, news, paint and so on, and the folders are 100% removed.

I tried Revo Uninstaller on my testsystem to uninstall most of the Windows Apps that I don't use (lie X-Box, Mail&Calender,).
Because only there were WindowsApps still all present, on my normal system I did uninstall all I did not want by the method in the startmenu (as described in the link posted by @hdmi in #19). I did that rightaway after I received the new system.

It took me quite a lot of time to do the Revo uninstall, because you can't specify what you want to uninstall and do one uninstall for all, but have to uninstall (and decide to do a cleaning) one by one. At the end I had about 45 MBytes more space on that system drive than before the cleaning. That is not worth choosing another method, even if that would reduce the size of the registry file.

Revo uninstaller is (for uninstalling Windows Apps) using the same method as described here:
Option Four: Uninstall Windows Apps and Android Apps for Current User in PowerShell
Be it that Revo does indeed remove registry files, but asks to agree in removing those and thats something I can't decide if each removing does harm to my system. So I left it like I did, without the use of Revo.

But for other purposes, like uninstalling normal programs, I think Revo is very usefull!

@Kees That is outdated just do what I said in my previous post... Has anyone looked at C:\Program Files\WindowsApps? winget is the latest and most safe and easiest way for Windows 11, it internally kinda uses the powershell scripts automatically, you dont need to google them, just use winget uninstall "package name"

Birk said:

I'll give Revo a try - although I did that about a year or so ago and it ended up taking out some stuff my system needed and I had to do a Windows reinstall. Maybe I made a mistake with Revo, so I'll be careful when I try again.

Click to expand...

REVO is a powerful tool, and just like all powerful tools, you need to be careful with it.
Now REVO won't saw off your finger or anything, but it can be just as painful to an operating system, if you're not careful.

Only remove things you "know" are safe to remove.
If you're not sure... do the research.
Find out what the thing you want to remove, does, "before" you eliminate it.

It's just like driving a car... if you can't "see" where you're going... don't drive there.

maffle said:

@Kees That is outdated just do what I said in my previous post... Has anyone looked at C:\Program Files\WindowsApps? winget is the latest and most safe and easiest way for Windows 11, it internally kinda uses the powershell scripts automatically, you dont need to google them, just use winget uninstall "package name"

Click to expand...

I tested Revo Uninstaller for uninstalling WindowsApps because some members here advised to do so. I did this in my test environment (VirtualBox), not in my real system. I know there are better methods and as I described, I won't use Revo for uninstalling WindowsApps in the real world!

But it was a nice opportunity the learn something about the much commended Revo installer.

Birk said:

I used the "Take Ownership" tweak posted here to get control of Program Files/Windows Apps. After doing that I was able to delete things just like they were regular files.

Click to expand...

And where is this posted ?

Found the Take Ownership file, ran it and it did take care of my problem(s). Was successful in removing the files ~ 5 GB of junk

Thanks to all who added to this endeavor

With 350GB+ of applications on my system I could not care less if I have 10GB of Store Apps. I use most of them almost daily anyways.

maffle said:

Open a cmd.exe as admin and type in the follow:

winget source reset --force
winget source update
winget list

now you can remove all you want with

winget uninstall "package name"

Click to expand...

I tried vanilla winget uninstall but it only listed on of several packages I wanted to uninstall. Are you saying the "winget source reset --force" command will force winget to reload from scratch all the resources it can find? If this is the case perhaps it will show everything in the

C:\Program Files\WindowsApps directory.​

Birk said:

I tried vanilla winget uninstall but it only listed on of several packages I wanted to uninstall. Are you saying the "winget source reset --force" command will force winget to reload from scratch all the resources it can find? If this is the case perhaps it will show everything in the

C:\Program Files\WindowsApps directory.​

Click to expand...

As far as Windows apps (UWP apps) are concerned, AFAIK the winget uninstall command is equivalent to the PowerShell command:
Get-AppxPackage name | Remove-AppxPackage
(Substitute name with the exact name of the package.)
That being said, you really don't need to use things like winget or Revo Uninstaller to do simple things like quickly uninstall a bunch of apps that includes apps like Mail and Calender, Bing Weather, Bing News, etc.. You don't even need to use PowerShell for it. Simply going in Windows Settings | Apps already lets you achieve the same, and it (also really...) doesn't take very long for you to achieve it. But anyway. Doing it the easy way is too boring I guess. lol

hdmi said:

That being said, you really don't need to use things like winget

Click to expand...

I hope you dont mean that seriously. What is more easy, more intuitive, more fast to use. type in winget uninstall "package name", or use a 2 line long powershell command you have to google and copy paste because it is so long, and counter intuitive to use you cant memorize it? and like I said also in my post, the winget command internally uses the correct powershell script line. so AGAIN obviously it is way more easier to use winget uninstall. also what you say makes no sense at all, because winget is an internally already installed Windows component by MS, it is not some 3rd party uninstaller like revo.

maffle said:

I hope you dont mean that seriously. What is more easy, more intuitive, more fast to use. type in winget uninstall "package name", or use a 2 line long powershell command you have to google and copy paste because it is so long, and counter intuitive to use you cant memorize it? and like I said also in my post, the winget command internally uses the correct powershell script line. so AGAIN obviously it is way more easier to use winget uninstall. also what you say makes no sense at all, because winget is an internally already installed Windows component by MS, it is not some 3rd party uninstaller like revo.

Click to expand...

You cut off the important part with your quote. To do simple things like uninstall the Weather, you don't have to jump through all these burning hoops if you don't want, and the only thing you had to do to figure this out was just read Brink's tutorial.

hdmi said:

You cut off the important part with your quote. To do simple things like uninstall the Weather

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No. I DIDNT. Most Windows UWP apps you CANT install via uninstall click as a user, weather is like one of the only where you can.

I'm afraid to look into mine. That said, I'm only at 35 percent disk use of a 512gig (476gig usable) drive so no sleep lost there.

maffle said:

No. I DIDNT.

Click to expand...

Of course you did.

maffle said:

Most Windows UWP apps you CANT install via uninstall click as a user, weather is like one of the only where you can.

Click to expand...

If you can't, then it usually means that you probably shouldn't. I already explained why... see my 1st reply to this thread, it's because using PowerShell (or winget, which uses PowerShell so it is equivalent in this regard...) to uninstall certain Windows system apps may appear to be fine, but can still wreak all sorts of havoc later on. The key difference here is in the word "simple"... trying to squeeze out a few dozens of extra megabytes by using PowerShell/winget in this manner just so you can run the risk of causing unwanted behavior, stability issues etc. is for those who want to obsess over the things that are simple, by making them unnecessarily hard. Granted, there can be exceptions to this, as some people really know what they're doing, and why. But what those people are doing, and why, still isn't "simple" by any stretch, so... lol