Version 5.0

Windows 10 isn't dead yet, and so isn't this tool!
While this release is partly due to Microsoft adding more useless features to Windows and making our lives harder, I also wanted to find better solutions that could smooth out some of the rough edges of the program.
In the end, this new version comes with several significant improvements that I didn't think were achievable a while ago. Enjoy!

• Dropped support for Windows 10 versions 20H2 and 21H1: the tool now only supports 21H2 or higher
• Completely reworked the way system apps (Edge legacy, Xbox Game Bar UI) are removed to be less invasive and more effective:
  • Make system apps removable operation has been removed, since the tool now makes a system app removable only when it's about to uninstall it
  • Removed system apps will not be reinstalled anymore after cumulative updates
  • The tool will now refuse to uninstall a system app only for the current user (previously it was possible, but didn't always work)
• Disable suggestions, cloud content and feedback requests has been split in two separate operations: Disable suggestions and feedback requests and Disable consumer features
  • The former only disables apps suggestions, Windows tips and feedback requests
  • The latter disables Spotlight, News and Interests, programmable taskbar and also some extra features:
    • Search highlights
    • Meet Now icon
    • automatic installation of suggested apps on Windows 10 Home and Pro
    • Bing search in Windows search bar (previously was done in Tweak settings for privacy, now also works on Home and Pro editions)
• Fixed Microsoft Edge removal, which didn't work at all with recent versions of the browser
  • The tool now also properly checks if Edge Chromium uninstallation is successful and reports an error if it isn't
• Disable Windows Defender antivirus now fails straight away if the user forgets to disable tamper protection in Windows Security app (previously the disabling procedure would have silently failed without reporting any errors)
• ⚠️ Aggressive disabling of smartscreen.exe introduced in version 4.3 has been removed because it breaks sideloading of UWP apps.
  If you used Win10BloatRemover 4.3 to disable Defender, you may want to undo smartscreen.exe disabling by running the following command in an administrator command prompt: reg delete "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\smartscreen.exe" /f
• Fixed automatic updates disabling for Store apps on Windows 10 Home
• Fixed Microsoft Store removal when some specific apps are installed
• Refined checks to determine whether the tool should recommend a system reboot, especially after removing UWP apps
• Remove UWP apps and Remove Windows features have been rewritten to leverage native Windows APIs instead of PowerShell commands: this makes them noticeably faster
• Many other under-the-hood improvements, including:
  • much faster start-up when the app is launched for the first time 🚀
  • greatly reduced executable size 🍃 (now 12MB instead of 36MB!)

Executable SHA-256 hash: A5E44A957A142C5C0B0C4821912696771870E6426CC514D3EBEE381EC3EBED66

Version 4.3

Several enhancements and fixes went into this release, which is primarily focused on stability and future-proofing:

• Make system apps removable now works on Windows 11 too
  • ⚠️ The tool continues NOT to support Windows 11, and there are no plans to do it in the future. This change has been made solely for users who want to do some experiments on Windows 11 at their own risk.
• Windows Defender disabling process received a few relevant improvements:
  • Windows Security app won't be uninstalled anymore
    • It's actually useful for changing exploit mitigation settings, which would otherwise be impossible to do
    • The app will still be prevented from running automatically at system start-up
    • For those who want to uninstall it anyway, they can do so by launching the PowerShell command Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers -Name Microsoft.Windows.SecHealthUI | Remove-AppxPackage -AllUsers after making system apps removable
  • Made SmartScreen disabling more aggressive, preventing smartscreen.exe from automatically starting in background
  • Fixed disabling of SmartScreen for Microsoft Edge Chromium
• Tweak settings for privacy will now also forcefully disable data reporting for personalization purposes in Microsoft Edge
• Disable suggestions, cloud-based content and feedback requests will disable Spotlight in Microsoft Edge too
• Edge uninstallation process will remove more leftover files created by Chromium-based Edge
• Fixed UWP apps removal not working in recent builds of Windows 11 (and potentially in future builds of Windows 10, in case Microsoft backports the breaking change)
• Fixed an error that could occur while removing certain OneDrive leftover files
• Minor performance and reliability improvements

Executable SHA-256 hash: D3503111215844CE53BCE33C48858428DAA958C9CA3F4A52F14104E3BA2FF380

Version 4.2

• Dropped support for Windows version 2004 (May 2020 Update) and added support for version 21H1 and higher
  • Concretely, this means that the program will not display any incompatibility warning on future Windows 10 feature updates (e.g. 21H2)
  • We now also have a single executable for all supported Windows versions (20H2 and higher) instead of separate binaries
• Disable tips and feedback requests feature has been overhauled with new capabilities and fixes (and was therefore renamed to Disable suggestions, cloud content and feedback requests):
  • System-wide disabling of News and Interests
  • Disabling of online tips for Settings app
  • Disabling of programmable (cloud-powered) taskbar
  • Fixed Spotlight disabling on Home and Pro editions (this time for real! 😁)
• Tweak settings for privacy will now also disable passwords and app data syncing with your Microsoft account
• Very minor improvements to Disable telemetry and Make system apps removable
• The program will now raise an error when the configuration file is empty instead of being silent and crashing afterwards

Last but not least, release binaries are now built using GitHub Actions! 🤖
In addition to making the build process consistent, this gives you the confidence that the EXE you run on your PC is built from the exact same code that gets pushed to this repository.

Executable SHA-256 hash: 1627404532FD734D2D137C07E203BF8D959AE11A1669D000175B8FF442B46C82

Version 4.1

This winter release brings several quality-of-life improvements, various fixes and a new feature! Here they are:

• Added support for Windows version 2009 aka 20H2 (October 2020 Update) and dropped support for 1909
• Added combined removal of both Edge Chromium and legacy UWP Edge (they are both installed on 20H2)
• Reboot recommendations after an operation is completed are more accurate (they're shown only when it's actually needed)
• Upon exiting, the program will prompt you to reboot the system if you have been recommended to do so
• User-specific settings in Windows Registry (used especially in Tweak settings for privacy and Disable tips) will now be applied to the Default user Registry hive too (and not only to the user which runs the tool)
  • This means that those user-specific settings will also be applied to all users created after those operations have been run, so it's recommended to run them before you create any other user in the system
• The program will now be usable on an incompatible Windows version (if you really need to 😉) instead of just displaying a fatal error
• Steps Recorder will not be disabled anymore when disabling telemetry
  • It is already a removable Windows feature since version 2004 and is not really telemetry-related
• Fixed default association of image files to legacy photo viewer after removing Photos app
• Miscellaneous minor tweaks and reliability improvements to Disable telemetry, Disable Defender, Remove miscellaneous services, Remove UWP apps, Remove OneDrive and Make system apps removable
• We've put the tool on a diet once again: published EXE is 15MBs smaller than the previous version 🥬

Version 4.0

And finally here we are! After being in the works for several months, this major release is now ready for the public.
Here is an incomplete list of what's changed in this version (spoiler: A LOT of things):

• Added executable for Windows version 2004 (May 2020 Update) and dropped support for 1903
• New feature Tweak settings for privacy: makes Windows more privacy-respectful by adjusting some default settings and policies (more details in Readme and inside the program)
• Added the ability to fully remove Cortana as a normal UWP app on version 2004 (its app group name is "Cortana")
  • This replaces the old mechanism that disables Cortana via Group Policies
• Added the ability to remove Sound Recorder app (its app group name is "SoundRecorder")
• From now on, Defender antivirus will only be disabled by editing Group Policies; its full removal broke the installation of Windows cumulative updates with error 0x800f081f
  • The disabling process has also been made more robust in response to the latest changes made by Microsoft
• Improved feature removal process: now it behaves exactly as if features were uninstalled from Settings app
  • Due to this change, WindowsFeaturesToRemove option now expects the names of the FOD capabilities you want to uninstall, not the names of the packages (see the Readme for more details)
• Changed UWPAppsRemovalMode option values and behavior: you now have the ability to choose whether to remove UWP apps only for the current user or for all users
  • Provisioned packages will now always be removed when an app is uninstalled for all users
  • This has been done in response to the recent changes to the app removal mechanism in Windows, which seem not to be consistent across all systems
• On version 2004, Connect app is not removed through Remove UWP apps anymore; use Remove Windows features instead (its feature name is "App.WirelessDisplay.Connect")
• Disable automatic updates will now disable speech model updates too
• Reworked the way OneDrive installation is prevented for new users to avoid removing OneDrive installer/uninstaller from the system
• Telemetry disabler has been improved and is now able to turn off more telemetry activities
• AllowInstallWimTweak option has been removed on version 2004, since install-wim-tweak is not used anymore on that version
  • On 1909 that option is still available, but it's now disabled by default
• When removing Microsoft Store, all UWP apps will not get blocked anymore
• Fixed disabling of Windows tips and Spotlight not working on Home and Pro editions
• Fixed Snip and Sketch app removal not working
• Fixed Report an issue/Suggest a feature operation failing to open the browser
• Fixed service removal failing when the path to the executable or the name of a service included spaces
• Many other tweaks and improvements, which include a smaller EXE file size (~15MB less)

I also discovered that one of the libraries used by the application (namely, PowerShell Core) was sneakily sending telemetry data to Microsoft! 😱
This has now been fixed, and I apologise for not having noticed that before. Read this page to know which kind of data could have been sent (nothing sensitive anyway).

Version 3.2

Many miscellaneous improvements in this release! Have a look at what's changed:

• Added binary for OS version 1909 and dropped support for 1809
• Cortana disabling procedure now includes web results disabling in Windows Search
• Fixed firewall rule to block Cortana (it was not correctly applied previously)
• The procedure to make system apps removable has been made much more reliable and less failure-prone
• Edge removal menu entry is now functional again and uses the method added in 3.0
• Clarify explanations for some of the operations
• Configuration: UWP app groups MailAndCalendar and People have been merged in a single group called CommunicationsApps (this is because they all depend on sync host service, which gets removed by post-uninstall operations)
• The application will ask you for confirmation when you try to terminate it with Ctrl+C
• When the application is force-closed, running child processes (e.g. install-wim-tweak) are killed. This is useful if you want to emergency-stop an operation you ran by accident
• Temporarily extracted install-wim-tweak will now be locked while the program is open to prevent it from being replaced/deleted by a third party
• Minor improvements to OneDrive removal process

Starting from this version, the program is distributed in a single standalone EXE that doesn't require anything installed on your machine. This results in a bigger bundle size and a slightly longer start-up time in some cases, but it allows the application to being fully independent and, in the future, to adopt new technologies faster.

Version 3.1 (aka 1903.1.1/1809.3.1)

Just a small release to improve things quite a bit:

• Rewrite service removal code - much faster now!
• Improved reliability of OneDrive post-uninstall cleanup
• Add some missing Windows Defender services to be removed
• Under the hood tweaks

Version 3.0 (aka 1903.1/1809.3)

Huge release adding support for the May 2019 Update! Here's the changelist:

• New feature to make system apps uninstallable via normal PowerShell methods - this brings other two exciting changes:
  • Edge can now be removed like any other UWP app (on 1903 install-wim-tweak method has been removed since it causes bugs)
  • Security Center app will be removed together with Windows Defender (no more broken Start menu icon)
• Added two new options to config.json (see README for details):
  • UWPAppsRemovalMode to prevent removal of provisioned packages
  • AllowInstallWimTweak to avoid usages of install-wim-tweak
• Improved OneDrive removal system to be more aggressive and less buggy
• After removal of Photos app, original Photo Viewer will be automatically restored
• 3D Objects folder will now vanish after removal of MixedReality app group
• Fixed a whole truckload of bugs and minor issues
• Under the hood improvements

Starting from this update, .NET Framework 4.7.2 is required (previously was 4.5).

Version 2.0 (aka 1809.2)

Biggest update to date! Here are the juicy changes:

• The program will now ask for admin rights when it is launched
• New Telemetry disabling menu entry that disables telemetry features and removes all telemetry services (protected ones too!)
• Add ability to remove Windows Store in UWP apps
• Add a menu entry to create a GitHub issue for your convenience
• Improve robustness of UWP app removal script
• Backport some compatible changes from the 1903 update of Windows 10 Privacy Guide
• Bug fixes and under the hood tweaks

Version 1.1 (aka 1809.1.1)

Little hotfix for Windows Defender services removal that was failing due to permission errors.