How To Uninstall Windows 10 Pre-Installed Apps

Windows 10 includes a variety of universal apps, and there’s no easy way to hide them from the “All Apps” view in the new Start menu. You can uninstall them, but Microsoft doesn’t allow you to easily uninstall them in the usual way.

You probably don’t want to do this. These apps take up very little space on your device so it’s best to just ignore them if you don’t want to use them. But, if you really want to uninstall them, you can. If you’ve already uninstalled included apps, you can get them all back with a single command.

Uninstall the App Normally

Some apps allow you to uninstall them in the normal way. Just right-click an app in the All Apps list in the Start menu and select “Uninstall”. (On a touch screen, long-press the app instead of right-clicking.)

This trick appears to work for the included Get Office, Get Skype, Get Started, Microsoft Solitaire Collection, Money, News, Phone Companion, and Sports apps. You can also uninstall bloatware apps your PC manufacturer has installed using this trick. However, Microsoft’s other included Windows 10 apps can’t be removed in this way.

Use PowerShell to Uninstall Built-in Apps

You can uninstall most of the built-in apps — even ones that don’t normally offer an “Uninstall” option — with a PowerShell cmdlet. This trick won’t allow you to remove a few of the most important built-in apps, including Cortana and Microsoft Edge. If you try, you’ll see an error message saying they can’t be removed.

First, open PowerShell as administrator. Open the Start menu, search for “PowerShell,” right-click the PowerShell shortcut, and select “Run as administrator.” Agree to the UAC prompt.

Copy and paste one or more of the following commands into the PowerShell prompt, pressing Enter after each one to remove the apps you don’t want on your Windows 10 system:

How to Reinstall All Built-in Apps

If you decide you want the preinstalled apps back, you can get them back with a single line of PowerShell code. Again, open a PowerShell window as Administrator. Copy and paste the following line into the PowerShell window and press Enter:

This tells Windows to install those default apps again. Give it some time and allow it to finish, even if nothing appears to happen at first. Even if you see an error message, restart and examine your Start menu — you may just have all those default apps back again, anyway.