Unable to uninstall AppX? How to uninstall builtin programs using PowerShell in Windows 10

Windows 10 includes a series of pre-installed apps that you can’t uninstall by selecting Uninstall options on their Start menu context menus. You may be encounter this issue from time to time that you are unable to uninstall certain applications via the graphical user interface. Below are some steps to help resolve this issue. See this guide on how to check if Windows Updates were Installed on your Computer using was, program and features, DISM and wmic, etc, and how to find the AUMID of an installed UWP App.

PowerShell is a task-based command line shell and scripting language, built on .NET. By using PowerShell, system administrators can automate tasks and processes using the command line.

Removing pre-provisioned apps from Windows Image

Pre-provisioned apps can be useless for some organizations. Oftentimes, these apps are deleted when there are new updates from Microsoft prompting you to upgrade your Operating System (OS). Most times, after these OS are upgraded to the latest version of Windows, these preinstalled apps appear again. To mitigate this issue, this appx must be removed from the Windows Image before installing the OS.

How to uninstall a program via Command Prompt (CMD) in Windows. Also see how to remove Windows 10 Apps with DISM: How to remove pre-provisioned apps from Windows Image and how to determine Apps UWP and remove pre-provisioned appx in Windows 10.

We need to list all installed app first in order to determine the names to find the application we wish to delete.
– Open PowerShell with administrative privileges and press Enter.

Get-AppxPackage | Select-Object -Property Name

To display the full package name which is currently missing in the image above, we will have to use the command below.

Get-AppxPackage | Select Name, PackageFullName

Now that we are able to display the “Package name” and “Package full-name”, we will be needing the package name in order to delete the application on a running Windows 10 device. Now that we have the apps, we would like to utilize PowerShell to remove some of the built-in apps.

Removing Built-in UWP Apps from Windows PC

We will be removing the built-in UWP apps from all your PC or user account. To do this follow the steps discussed below.
1– Remove UWP apps from a single user account: Here you do not need to specify additional switches, run the command below by replacing it with your desired package name you wish to remove.

Get-AppxPackage -Name Microsoft.Xbox.TCUI | Remove-AppxPackage

However, to uninstall the app from all user accounts you need to include -allusers by entering the following command:

Get-AppxPackage -allusers PackageFullName | Remove-AppxPackage

As you can se below, the application is no more available. Use the following command “Get-AppxPackage | Select Name, PackageFullName” to display the inbuilt and package full name.

Uninstall builtin programs using PowerShell in Windows

You can alternatively use PsInfo from Sysinternals to list all the installed software. If you use the -s flag when you run it. For more on SysInternal, see the following guides on how to download and use Windows SysInternals tools locally and how to use SysInternals Live Tools. For more information on Sysinternals tools, visit this link.

C:> psinfo -s > software.txt

You can also use -c to output it as a CSV file to use in Excel as shown below.

C:> psinfo -s -c > software.csv

I hope you found this blog post helpful. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comment session. I welcome you to follow me on Twitter and Facebook.