Every working device consists of features that a few humans don’t like or need. It’s even greater of a problem with Google Android, which I use to recognize the annoyance. However, on a Surface Pro 4, disposing of the Microsoft apps will not save a sizeable amount of area, neither is it going to make the slightest difference to overall performance.
The effort and time you spend removing those applications will don’t have any realistic blessings. Microsoft may additionally well reinstall them with every operating machine improvement, that’s two times a year, if not before. (Windows 10 runs a SIHClient – for Server-Initiated Healing – every day to repair any damage to the operating machine.) You will consequently be devoted to losing even more time for the foreseeable future.
Nonetheless, you may hide or take away many applications, such as ancient ones, including Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer 11. You can virtually get rid of the trial reproduction of Microsoft Office, which may additionally have been pre-established to your PC. At least that saves some space. So does getting rid of the free video games. However, you should no longer uninstall the Windows Store app or the Edge browser.
Apps and placeholders
Some Microsoft packages have tiles or appear at the Start menu. You could make them go away by right-clicking them and deciding on “Uninstall” or no less than “Unpin from Start” from the drop-down menu.
If no longer, run the Settings app and click on “Apps & capabilities.” This lists your apps and packages and tells you how a whole lot area everyone is taking up. Click on software you don’t want, and you’ll be presented with the option to uninstall it.
Otherwise, Piriform’s CCleaner Free offers an easy manner to do away with a maximum of the bundled apps. Run CCleaner Free and click on Tools (the spanner icon) to get a list of packages. Click on Publisher to type that column so that every one of the Microsoft apps is collective.
The Edge browser is a part of Windows 10, and its components can be used by different software programs to display HTML documents. The EdgeHTML rendering engine is also available to 1/3-birthday party applications, saving anybody from delivering their own rendering engine with each utility. It should consequently store area ultimately. Removing it may properly destroy functionality.
Edge is a superb browser and worth keeping if best as a backup. It has an Adobe Flash Player and a PDF reader built-in, and it’s high-quality for viewing online films. It doesn’t have as many features as its opponents or as many extensions, but it’s miles improving gradually. It additionally follows internet requirements. What it doesn’t do is assist websites written for Internet Explorer. That’s why IE11 is still included in Windows 10.
Edge also forms a part of Microsoft’s “clever assistant” gadget, which incorporates Cortana, Edge, and the Bing search engine. Both Google and Apple use the same architecture form with their own assistants, browsers, and lower back-ends.
Cortana
Cortana does matter in Windows 10. First, it runs the neighborhood search machine. Second, Cortana is a cloud-primarily based virtual assistant, like the addition of cloud-based Amazon Alexa. There’s no point in doing away with the previous, and maximum of the latter isn’t on your PC. What you could do is stop Cortana from gathering facts approximately you.
Run the Settings app, click on the Cortana icon, and paint thru all the alternatives. The section referred to as Permissions & History includes “Change what Cortana knows about me inside the cloud.” Clicking this will produce a pop-up headed “Personal Information.” Scroll to the lowest and click on the button marked Clear to delete it all. Alternatively, you can go online to see and delete all the facts Microsoft holds inside the cloud, together with Cortana.
Microsoft’s help web page, Cortana, and privateness, affords an amazing manual to turning off Cortana’s statistics assets if they have been growing to become one.
Cortana can be disturbing when she hundreds of Edge to search the net. However, you can keep away from this. When you click inside the seek box, pick both Apps or Documents and keep away from the Web. If you go to the pinnacle and click on the down-arrow next to Filters, you can limit searches even similarly by using selecting Emails, Music, People, Photos, Videos, etc., from the listing.
However, you may effortlessly turn Cortana off by way of signing out. That’s how Cortana works on Android and Apple iOS as well. Click on Cortana’s Notebook, choose About Me, click on your email address and then click on “Sign out.”
If none of this is enough, you could disable Cortana using enhancing the registry in Windows 10 Home, at your own danger. See How-To Geek for info. In the Pro and Enterprise variations of Windows 10, you can permit or disable Cortana with the aid of checking the “Allow Cortana” access in the institution policy editor, which does the identical aspect.
As noted, the Settings app uninstalls programs. However, it hasn’t absolutely changed the old Control Panel. To run this, type “co” inside the search field and run this system while it appears.
The Control Panel simplest lists programs that run inside the conventional Windows subsystem, known as Win32. It does no longer listing new-style apps that run within the cross-platform Windows Runtime subsystem, WinRT, but check the listing besides to peer if there may be whatever you need to dispose of.
After that, go to the lefthand menu and click “Turn Windows capabilities on or off.” This pops up a box where you could add capabilities that you might want – an FTP Server, a Telnet customer, the Linux subsystem – and takes away ones you don’t. Windows Media Player and IE11 appear right here, though I advocate preserving both.
However, if SMB 1.0 is enabled, untick it to take it away. It’s insecure, and you don’t need it.
Note that neither Notepad nor WordPad is noted in any of those lists, nor do they appear on the Start menu. Both are blanketed in Windows 10, so you can read files and log documents while not having to download any other application, and you may run them from the quest container.
Stop hating apps!
Many users appear to dislike modern-day (WinRT) apps. However, that doesn’t make me feel. Modern apps are more secure to run and simpler to put in and uninstall because they don’t use the registry. They are remotely maintained without walking an updater within the historical past, and paintings properly with touch. Many run equally nicely on Intel and ARM processors. What’s no longer to love?
If you exchange your mind, you could re-installation Windows 10 apps from the Windows Store. You also can add apps from Microsoft and other providers. Potentially useful loose apps consist of OneDrive and Dropbox Mobile, Facebook, and Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Unigram (a Telegram consumer), Todoist, Adobe Photoshop Express, Xodo PDF Reader & Editor, Netflix, TuneIn Radio, Deezer Music, SoundByte (for SoundCloud and many others), Grover Pro (for podcasts), Tubecast for YouTube, Audiobooks from Audible, Plex and Microsoft Remote Desktop. Paid-for apps include Nebo for making handwritten notes for your Surface Pro four and Stafford for writing songs.
