Windows being filled with bloatware is like saying rain is wet: it’s common knowledge. A lot of the programs that come preinstalled with Windows are things nobody asks for or even uses. Like, who uses Clipchamp or still plays Solitaire? Definitely not me, and I don’t know anyone who does.
Apart from being mostly useless, these apps take up valuable space on your storage drive and can contribute to a slower and more cluttered PC over time. Well, I refuse to live with that forever, so I took matters into my hands.
Turns out Windows is more bloated than I thought
The Apps section only shows part of what’s really installed
When I install Windows on a new PC, I usually spend a few minutes going through the installed apps and removing anything I know I won’t use. Windows lets me do this freely because, well, it knows it doesn’t show you the full picture.
There are plenty of other components, background services, telemetry, and apps that aren’t always obvious from the regular Apps section in Settings. Even worse, manually uninstalling a bloatware app doesn’t necessarily mean every trace of it disappears from your PC. You can still end up with leftover files, settings, scheduled tasks, services, or other components associated with the software. So, sometimes, Windows updates can bring some of these apps back. Classic Windows move.
That’s what made me curious about whether there was a better way to clean up Windows than manually going through Settings and uninstalling apps one by one. I know there are PowerShell scripts that do a pretty good job of removing Windows bloatware. The problem is that not everyone is comfortable using PowerShell and running commands they found online.
Winhance found and purged bloatware I didn’t know existed
The graphical interface makes debloating Windows much easier
I came across Winhance, a free open-source Windows de-bloating tool, and decided to see what it could find on my PC. One thing I immediately liked is that the app prompts you to create a restore point as soon as you open it. That’s a good precaution when you’re about to make changes to system components, and it gives you a way back if something goes wrong.
Meanwhile, Winhance is designed to do more than simply uninstall a few visible Windows apps. It can identify and remove unwanted components and programs that aren’t necessarily obvious when you’re cleaning up Windows manually. More importantly, it creates scripts and scheduled tasks that automatically re-remove bloatware if a Windows update tries to reinstall it.
The app also takes a much more approachable route by giving you a graphical user interface where you can see the available options and choose what you want to change. To top it off, you can save your Winhance configuration and use it on another PC. So if you regularly set up multiple Windows computers, you don’t have to repeat the same de-bloating and customization process from scratch every time.
Once you’ve figured out how you want Windows configured, you can essentially carry those preferences over to another installation.
Winhance goes beyond removing bloatware
It also gives you more control over how Windows looks and behaves
Winhance gives you a range of options for optimizing and customizing Windows beyond what Microsoft currently gives you in the regular Settings app. From a single dashboard, you can adjust privacy, security, gaming performance, power management, and Windows Update settings without jumping between different menus.
One of my favorite options is the ability to prevent hardware vendors from automatically installing their own software during driver installation. This way, additional bloatware apps like Razer Synapse won’t get onto your PC after a driver update. That’s something I don’t think gets enough attention.
Winhance also lets you personalize the appearance and behavior of core Windows components, including the Taskbar, Start menu, and File Explorer. You can adjust theme preferences and change various interface behaviors to make Windows feel more like your own setup instead of accepting Microsoft’s defaults.
This finally feels like my Windows
I don’t think anyone expects Windows to be completely free of unnecessary software. Microsoft has plenty of reasons for including certain apps, services, and features, whether they’re useful to you or not. But there’s a difference between having a few optional apps installed and having an operating system that accumulates software and settings you never asked for.
Manually uninstalling unwanted apps from Settings is still better than doing nothing, but it doesn’t necessarily give you the clean Windows installation you might expect. Winhance showed me just how much more there was to clean up on my PC, and I liked that I could do it through a user-friendly graphical interface.
- OS
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Windows
- Price model
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Free
