Tip of the Week: How to Get Rid of These Windows 10 Apps that are Bad for Business

Windows 10 sure does come with plenty of helpful, pre-installed apps. However, the OS also comes with its share of useless apps that most working professionals have no need for, and will likely never open. What are these useless Windows 10 apps and how can you get rid of them?

If you’re using your device for business purposes only, here are a few of the apps you’ll likely want off your PC.

Xbox
The Xbox app is a nice attempt by Microsoft at platform congruence by connecting the Xbox gaming experience with user PCs, mobile devices, and social networks. While fans of Xbox might get a kick out of the app, the vast majority of business owners probably don’t want to pay their employees to play videos and check in on their high scores.

Office Hub
This app was originally bundled with Windows 10 as Get Office. Recently, Microsoft changed the app to Office Hub. The move to upgrade Get Office shows that Microsoft may have bigger plans for this app, but for now all you can really do with it is view recent documents, open Office apps, and get support from Microsoft. So really, it’s not very useful if you already use Microsoft Office, and even less so if you don’t.

Microsoft Solitaire Collection
Microsoft has been bundling Windows with solitaire for as long as we can remember. Keeping with this tradition, Windows 10 comes with the Solitaire Collection app, which includes the solitaire game, along with other games, and online access to even more games. Essentially, most business owners frown on employees playing games on company time, so removing the Solitaire Collection app may be in your company’s best interest.

Various Bing Apps: Finance, News, Sports, Weather
Okay Microsoft. We get it. You want everybody to use Bing. Unless you’re an avid fan of Bing, you likely already have a favorite source to get your finance, news, sports, and weather information. If this is the case, then these Bing apps are fairly useless and you may want to remove them.

Use PowerShell to Remove These Useless Apps
Microsoft has pre-installed these apps for a reason, and they don’t want to make it easy for you to remove them. To give you an idea of Microsoft’s intentions, consider the fact that you can’t uninstall these apps with a simple right click, and (in a break with past versions of Windows) the Windows 10 Uninstall menu item is purposely missing. However, just because Microsoft makes it harder to uninstall their pre-installed apps, doesn’t mean that it’s impossible.

Note: When removing these apps and other pre-installed apps, be sure to carefully research the ramifications of removing them since some apps are deeply integrated with Windows 10 and may therefore negatively affect the overall performance of your OS. For example, even if you don’t like Cortana, you shouldn’t remove it (and good luck turning it off).

To uninstall these apps, you have to use PowerShell. To open Windows PowerShell, type powershell in the Cortana search box and right-click the first result in the list. This will allow you to run the PowerShell app as administrator.

Next, to remove the Xbox app, at the PS prompt type (or copy and paste) the command Get-AppxPackage *xboxapp* | Remove-AppxPackage and then press Enter.

This will remove the Xbox app. Upon exiting PowerShell and returning to the Start Menu, you should no longer see the Xbox app displayed.

To use PowerShell to remove the other apps mentioned above, use the following commands:

• Get-AppxPackage *officehub* | Remove-AppxPackage
• Get-AppxPackage *solitairecollection* | Remove-AppxPackage
• Get-AppxPackage *bingfinance* | Remove-AppxPackage
• Get-AppxPackage *bingnews* | Remove-AppxPackage
• Get-AppxPackage *bingsports* | Remove-AppxPackage
• Get-AppxPackage *bingweather* | Remove-AppxPackage

Use the Start Menu and Settings Menu to Uninstall Other Apps in Windows 10
Of course, what makes the apps so difficult to uninstall is that they come pre-installed with Windows 10. Apps that don’t come pre-installed can be uninstalled more easily by using the Windows 10 Start Menu and Settings Menu.

With these apps gone, you’ll have space freed up on your hard drive, and a PC that’s less cluttered. For more tips on how to improve the efficiency of your computer, be sure to subscribe to Suffolk Computer Consultants’s blog!