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,
WindowsFeaturesToRemoveoption now expects the names of the FOD capabilities you want to uninstall, not the names of the packages (see the Readme for more details)
- Due to this change,
- Changed
UWPAppsRemovalModeoption 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
AllowInstallWimTweakoption 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).