How to Uninstall Built-in Windows Apps Using PowerShell

How Appx apps work and which are safe to remove

The Store-style apps bundled with Windows — Weather, News, Sports, Finance, Solitaire, the Xbox family, Get Help — are Appx packages installed per user and registered when each account first signs in. PowerShell can unregister them from the current user, from all accounts at once, or delete the provisioned copy: the template Windows uses to stock the profile of every new account. Classic desktop programs never appear in this list; they uninstall through Settings or their own uninstaller.

Removal is reversible: an uninstalled inbox app comes back from the Microsoft Store or by re-registering it from its manifest, so a mistaken removal is a nuisance rather than a disaster. Still, a few packages are load-bearing: the Store itself, the Windows Security interface and the desktop-installer package that carries winget will not come back with a simple Store search once broken.

• Microsoft.WindowsStore — the Store itself; without it no app installs or updates
• Microsoft.SecHealthUI — the Windows Security interface; without it the protection settings break
• Microsoft.DesktopAppInstaller — the package carrying winget; removing it kills the winget command
• Microsoft.StorePurchaseApp — in-app purchases and account functions of the Store
• Microsoft.XboxIdentityProvider — the sign-in component several games and Game Pass titles need

Removing an app for the current user, all users and future accounts

Open Windows Terminal as administrator — right-click Start → Terminal (Admin) — and list what is installed with Get-AppxPackage | Select Name, PackageFullName. Find the package, say Microsoft.BingWeather, and remove it for yourself: Get-AppxPackage *bingweather* | Remove-AppxPackage. Wildcards work in the name filter, the command finishes in a few seconds, and the app disappears from the Start menu immediately.

For a machine-wide removal, target every account plus the template for future ones. Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers *bingweather* | Remove-AppxPackage -AllUsers strips the package from all profiles, and the provisioned copy — what new accounts receive — goes with Get-AppxProvisionedPackage -Online | Where-Object {$_.DisplayName -like '*Bing*'} | Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -Online. Without that second command, every new user account starts with the app freshly installed.

Getting apps back and surviving feature updates

A removed inbox app returns in two cases: you reinstall it from the Store — search by its plain name — or a Windows feature update re-provisions part of the inbox set. After every major update, re-run your removal commands or keep them as a small script; the removal itself never blocks the update. To re-register everything at once, run Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers | ForEach-Object { Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register ($_.InstallLocation + '\AppXManifest.xml') }, which reinstalls the inbox set without downloading anything.

If an app refuses to leave or comes back under a different name, check its exact identity first: Get-AppxPackage -Name *weather* | Select Name, PackageFullName. Names change between builds — Cortana's identifier Microsoft.549981C3F5F10 is the classic example — so filtering by a stable word like bing or xbox beats guessing full names. And resist community debloat scripts that remove dozens of packages blind: they take out Store and security dependencies along with the clutter.

Questions and Answers

Read next

All articles · FAQ