How to Uninstall Microsoft Teams Completely From Windows

How Teams actually installs itself

The classic Teams client was an Electron app that installed per user, without admin rights, into %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Teams — which is why it appeared on every profile of a shared PC. Companies that wanted it everywhere deployed the MSI-based Teams Machine-Wide Installer, whose whole job is to drop a copy of the app into each profile at sign-in. The 2023 “new Teams” moved to a modern MSTeams package installed per machine or per user, and the classic app was retired, with work and school support ending on July 1, 2024.

Before you start removing anything, open Settings > Apps > Installed apps and see which entries you actually have. On a home PC that is usually just “Microsoft Teams” or “Microsoft Teams (free)”; on a work machine expect the machine-wide installer, possibly both generations of the app, and a sign-in handled by your employer's policies. The list below is what a full cleanup has to cover.

• Microsoft Teams — the new MSTeams app, removable from Installed apps
• Microsoft Teams classic — the old per-user app under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Teams
• Teams Machine-Wide Installer — a redeployment engine listed in Programs and Features, not an app you run
• Microsoft Teams (free) — the consumer variant once bundled with Windows 11
• Autostart entry — “Microsoft Teams” in Task Manager > Startup apps
• Cache and data folders — %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Teams, %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Teams and %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\MSTeams_8wekyb3d8bbwe

Uninstalling in the right order

Start with the redeployment engine: open Control Panel > Programs and Features (or Settings > Apps > Installed apps), find Teams Machine-Wide Installer and uninstall it first — otherwise it can quietly reinstall the app for the next person who signs in. Then remove the apps themselves: uninstall Microsoft Teams (and Microsoft Teams classic or the free consumer variant, if present) from the same list. On a home PC without the machine-wide entry, you simply start at this step.

The new Teams also yields to PowerShell from an administrator terminal: Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers *MSTeams* | Remove-AppxPackage removes the package for every user on the machine. Finally, open Task Manager > Startup apps and disable anything named Microsoft Teams, so no leftover copy relaunches at sign-in. On a company-managed PC, expect the management agent to put things back — that is a conversation with your IT department, not a bug in your uninstall.

Cleaning up leftovers — and stopping it coming back

After the uninstall, the data folders remain, and they are safe to delete: classic Teams kept settings and caches in %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Teams and %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Teams, the meeting add-in for Outlook lived in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\TeamsMeetingAddin, the updater left junk in %LOCALAPPDATA%\SquirrelTemp, and the new Teams stores its local cache under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\MSTeams_8wekyb3d8bbwe. Your chat history is not in any of them — it lives in the cloud with your account — so deleting these folders costs you nothing but disk space. The classic autostart entry, if it survived, sits in the registry under HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run as com.squirrel.Teams.TeamsDesktop; Task Manager's Startup apps view removes the same thing more safely.

Two practical warnings wrap it up. First, if Teams was installed by your organization, the installer or a group policy will likely bring it back on schedule — unmanaged home PCs stay clean. Second, if your goal is simply a quieter PC rather than total removal, a startup-ectomy is often enough: disable Teams in Startup apps and let the app sleep. Kleaner PRO does not combine Teams removal, startup disabling and complete residual-file cleanup into a single pass. Use Windows Settings to uninstall it, Task Manager to change startup, and inspect leftover files or tasks separately.

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