Windows 10 and 11 both have many applications and utilities preinstalled, but some of the tools aren’t helpful on every PC, or there are third-party alternatives that you might prefer to use instead. Thankfully, a few more preinstalled applications on Windows 11 will soon be (officially) removable, according to a recent announcement from Microsoft.
Microsoft just released Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 25931 in the Canary Channel of the Winders Insider program. It has a few bug fixes and security changes, more fields in the updated Details pane of File Explorer, synchronizing the Windows accent color with supported connected hardware, and a few other changes. The update also allows you to uninstall the Photos app, Remote Desktop client (MSTSC), and People app for the first time. Microsoft was already testing the ability to remove the Cortana app (which is now useless) and the Camera app.
It’s already possible to remove just about any application in Windows, usually through administrator-level commands in PowerShell or changing the registry, but you run the risk of unexpected errors with applications or windows APIs that are expecting the system applications to be present. With this change, the applications should be easily removable from the Windows 11 settings, and removing them shouldn’t cause other applications or system features to break.
Microsoft didn’t mention in the blog post how you can reinstall the applications after removing them, but it’s likely that they will be available through the Microsoft Store (the Windows 10 Camera app has been in the Store for years) or the optional features settings.
There’s no timeline yet on when these changes will roll out to all Windows 11 PCs. Microsoft is also working on other changes for Windows 11 that are in various stages of testing, such as updates to screen casting, improvements to virtualized Android apps, a redesigned Nearby Sharing menu, and the removal of support for 32-bit ARM applications. It’s great to see so many usability and performance improvements show up over time, but there’s still plenty of aspects of Windows 11 that aren’t great, like all the annoying advertisements.
Source: Windows Blog
