How to Debloat Windows 11 and Remove Bloatware

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Ankit Kumar
Windows 11DebloatOptimizationPrivacy

What Debloating Actually Buys You

Debloating is removing preinstalled apps, trials, and background features you never use. Be realistic about the payoff: on a modern PC with an SSD and 16 GB of RAM, removing Solitaire will not make anything faster.

What genuinely helps:

  • Startup and background apps — fewer things competing at login and running all day. This is the real win.
  • Manufacturer trials and "assistant" utilities — often the heaviest offenders on a new laptop.
  • Disk space — meaningful on 128 GB and 256 GB machines.
  • Noise — fewer notifications, promotions, and suggested-content prompts.

After a genuinely faster PC? Pair this with speed up a slow Windows 11 PC and disable startup programs.

Step 1: Create a Restore Point

Before removing anything system-level: search Create a restore point → System Protection → Create. See create and use a system restore point.

Step 2: Uninstall Unwanted Apps

  1. Settings → Apps → Installed apps.
  2. Sort by Size to find the heavy items, or by Install date to spot everything the manufacturer preloaded.
  3. Click ⋯ next to anything you do not use → Uninstall.

Safe to remove: manufacturer trials and "experience" apps, preinstalled McAfee or Norton trials, bundled games, Candy Crush and similar Store promotions, Xbox apps if you do not game, Cortana, and Microsoft Teams (personal).

Leave alone: anything named Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable, .NET, Windows Desktop Runtime, Intel/AMD/NVIDIA driver packages, Realtek audio, and your laptop maker's driver utility (as opposed to its marketing app). Removing redistributables breaks applications that quietly depend on them.

Step 3: Remove Preinstalled Store Apps

Most built-ins can be removed from the Start menu: right-click the tile → Uninstall.

For the ones that offer no Uninstall option, use PowerShell (Admin). List what is installed first:

Get-AppxPackage | Select-Object Name, PackageFullName | Sort-Object Name

Then remove a specific package by name, for example:

Get-AppxPackage *XboxGamingOverlay* | Remove-AppxPackage

Remove only packages you recognise, one at a time. Never run a blanket Get-AppxPackage | Remove-AppxPackage—it breaks the Microsoft Store, Settings, and the Start menu.

Do not remove: Microsoft.WindowsStore, Microsoft.DesktopAppInstaller, Microsoft.VCLibs.*, Microsoft.UI.Xaml.*, Microsoft.WindowsTerminal, Microsoft.SecHealthUI (Windows Security), or anything with Framework in the name.

If you remove something you needed, reinstall it from the Microsoft Store, or re-register all built-ins:

Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}

Step 4: Turn Off Suggested Content and Promotions

  1. Settings → Personalization → Start → turn off Show recommendations for tips, shortcuts, new apps, and more.
  2. Settings → Privacy & security → General → turn off all four suggestion and advertising toggles.
  3. Settings → System → Notifications → scroll to the bottom and untick Offer suggestions on how I can set up my device and Get tips and suggestions when using Windows.
  4. Settings → Personalization → Lock screen → set Personalize your lock screen to Picture rather than Windows spotlight if you do not want promoted content there.

For a full pass: disable telemetry and tracking.

Step 5: Trim Startup Apps

  1. Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc) → Startup apps.
  2. Sort by Startup impact and disable anything High that you do not need at login: updaters, chat clients, RGB utilities, launcher clients, printer monitors.
  3. Leave audio drivers, touchpad utilities, and security software enabled.

Details: disable startup programs to speed up boot.

Step 6: Stop Background Apps

  1. Settings → Apps → Installed apps → an app's ⋯ → Advanced options.
  2. Set Background apps permissions to Never for anything you open occasionally and do not need alerts from.

Do not do this to apps whose notifications you rely on—see fix notifications not working for the consequences.

Step 7: Optional Features and Scheduled Tasks

  • Settings → System → Optional features — remove things like Internet Explorer mode components, WordPad, or language features you do not use.
  • Settings → Apps → Advanced app settings → Choose where to get apps — set to anywhere, but be aware this is also where the Store-only lockdown lives if you want it.

What Not to Do

  • Don't run debloat scripts you have not read. The popular ones on GitHub vary enormously in aggression; several disable Windows Update, Defender, or the Store in ways that are difficult to reverse and that break future feature updates.
  • Don't remove Microsoft Edge with a hack. WebView2 underpins Widgets, Outlook, Teams, and various app UIs; removing it forcibly breaks them in confusing ways.
  • Don't disable services because a list said so. Windows 11's service defaults are already conservative, and a disabled service surfaces as a mysterious failure months later.
  • Don't debloat a work laptop managed by an IT department. Policies will fight you and you may breach compliance requirements.

Prefer not to use PowerShell? Ultimate Windows Cleanup Tool clears junk, browser cache, and large files in one offline pass—useful for a repeatable cleanup across several PCs.

After Debloating

  1. Restart and confirm everything you actually use still launches.
  2. Check what you reclaimed: Settings → System → Storage, and free up disk space for the rest.
  3. If something broke, roll back to the restore point you made in Step 1—which is why that step is not optional.

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