Everyone has at least a couple of Windows features they find particularly annoying. Whether that’s ads showing up everywhere, deep OneDrive integration that can sometimes make locally stored files harder to manage, or not being able to uninstall certain built-in apps even though you know you’ll never use them, we all have our Windows pet peeves.

The good news is that you can disable most Windows features you don’t like via PowerShell or Registry Editor. Today, I’ll show you how to use PowerShell to disable certain Windows features I find particularly annoying, as well as how to remove apps you can’t uninstall through Windows Settings.

Fully remove Copilot

Gone for good

My Windows PC is completely Copilot-free. It’s not that I avoid using LLM chatbots altogether; it’s simply that there’s a time and place for them, and I’d rather access them through my browser than have one constantly showing its face all over my PC.

I used a PowerShell script to fully remove Copilot, along with a bunch of other unnecessary apps and services, back when I installed Windows 11 on my desktop PC. Of course, I forgot exactly which script I used because I didn’t write its name down. No biggie, because there’s an excellent PowerShell script known as RemoveWindowsAI you can use to safely and efficiently remove AI-related features and components from your PC, such as Windows Recall and AI-related appx and CBS packages, not just Copilot.

All you have to do is open PowerShell as administrator (you should always open it as administrator to run the commands shown in this article) and paste the following script:

& ([scriptblock]::Create((irm "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zoicware/RemoveWindowsAI/main/RemoveWindowsAi.ps1")))

Then wait a bit for the app to load. Once you’re shown the menu listing the components you can remove, pick the ones you want gone and click Apply. I recommend enabling Backup mode so you can restore removed services later if needed.

Removing all AI-related services from your PC takes a while, so just let the tool do its job. Once it’s done, you’ll need to restart your PC. After you boot back into Windows, you shouldn’t see any Copilot components on your system anymore, along with Recall if you chose to remove it as well.

Uninstall apps Windows doesn’t let you

Including built-in apps

You can remove most apps on your Windows PC by opening Settings and going to Apps > Installed apps. The thing is, you can’t remove every single app this way, including a number of built-in Windows apps. Well, you can remove pretty much any app from your PC with PowerShell. Before you start deleting apps, you’ll need to list all app packages installed on your PC by typing:

Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers Once you find an app you want removed, locate its full package name and type:

Remove-AppxPackage -Package PackageFullName

Then replace PackageFullName with the app’s full package name.

Let me show you how to do it with an example. I found that I still had the Weather app on my PC even though I thought I’d already uninstalled it. Its full package name was Microsoft.BingWeather_4.54.63040.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe. To uninstall it, I had to type the following command:

Remove-AppxPackage -Package Microsoft.BingWeather_4.54.63040.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe

The uninstallation process started as soon as I hit Enter, and a few seconds later, Weather was gone from my PC.

Prevent Microsoft from reinstalling apps through Windows updates

And delete them for good

Windows 11 includes a number of preinstalled UWP (Universal Windows Platform) apps that are automatically installed during the initial sign-in process when setting up Windows. These apps include things like Outlook, Microsoft 365, Clipchamp, and more.

These so-called “provisioned” apps are installed every time a new user logs into a Windows PC, even if you’d already deleted them from your own user profile. They can also get reinstalled during major Windows updates, meaning they may reappear even after you’ve removed them.

Luckily, you can get rid of these apps for good by deprovisioning them and then uninstalling them. All you need are a few PowerShell commands. To start, you need to list all provisioned apps on your PC with the following command:

Get-AppxProvisionedPackage -Online | Format-Table DisplayName, PackageName

Once you hit Enter, you’ll get a list of all provisioned apps on your PC. As you can see from my screenshots, I don’t have many left because I’d already deprovisioned and deleted most of them, but a few still remain. One of those apps, aimgr, is a local AI manager component tied to Microsoft 365 that somehow survived the purge I ran after installing Windows 11.

Naturally, after seeing it was still on my PC, I wanted to remove it for good. So I copied its full package name (shown in one of the screenshots) and typed the following command to deprovision it:

Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -Online -PackageName aimgr_0.20.47.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe

If you want to deprovision an app on your PC, just replace aimgr_0.20.47.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe with the full package name of the app you want to remove.

After deprovisioning it, I ran the command that lists provisioned apps again, and aimgr no longer appeared. That means it was deprovisioned for all current and future user accounts on my PC, and a future Windows update shouldn’t bring it back.

However, that’s not the end of it, because you still have to uninstall the app from your current Windows installation. Deprovisioning only prevents Windows from automatically installing it for new users or restoring it through certain update processes.

What I did next was run the command that lists all installed apps on my PC:

Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers I then located the aimgr app and removed it with the following command:

Remove-AppxPackage -Package aimgr_0.20.47.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe

Now aimgr is not only deprovisioned, but also removed from my PC for good. If you want to get an app back after removing it this way in the future, you can always reinstall it the regular way.

Microsoft decided to “upgrade” the contextual right-click menu in Windows 11, but many long-time Windows users, myself included, still find the Windows 10 version superior. Unfortunately, you can’t simply disable the new contextual menu and roll back to the Windows 10 version through Settings, but you can do it with a simple command.

I used this tweak right after installing Windows 11 on my PC to bring back the Windows 10-style contextual menu, and I can confirm it’s worked great ever since. I haven’t had to reapply it after updates or anything like that.

To restore the Windows 10 contextual menu, paste the following command into PowerShell and then restart your PC:

reg.exe add "HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32" /f /ve

If you later decide you actually prefer the newer design, you can revert to the default Windows 11 right-click menu by running the following command and then rebooting your PC:

reg.exe delete "HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}" /f

Disable Bing search

Banish online results from Windows Search

Another Windows 11 feature I find particularly annoying is Bing-powered online search results appearing in Windows Search and the Start menu. To me, they just make Search slower without adding much value, because when I want to search for something online, I use a browser. I use Windows Search to look for settings, apps, or files stored locally on my PC.

Unfortunately, you can’t fully disable this feature through Windows Settings, but you can with PowerShell. Disabling Bing online search results is dead simple. All it takes is entering the following command into PowerShell and hitting Enter:

reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search /v BingSearchEnabled /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

You generally shouldn’t need to reboot your PC for the change to take effect, though you may need to restart Windows Explorer. Unfortunately, Microsoft has largely disabled this tweak from also removing Microsoft Store app suggestions in Search. There used to be more effective workarounds for this, but many of them have since been blocked or broken by Windows updates. Still, this tweak is better than nothing.

What’s included?

Device encryption, find my device, firewall and network protection, internet protection, and more

Brand

Microsoft

Upgrading the operating system for your PC can be simple with Windows 11 Home; it offers a simple, fast, and intuitive interface for ease of use.

PowerShell is one of the most useful Windows tools out there

PowerShell is, hands down, one of the most useful tools available in Windows. You can use it to troubleshoot and fix issues, install, update, and remove apps, disable features you don’t need, enable or disable optional Windows components, automate tasks, and much more.

If you’ve been avoiding it because the command-line interface looks intimidating, try running a few simple everyday commands and see for yourself that PowerShell really isn’t that scary once you learn the ropes.