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