How to uninstall and reinstall Windows 10 built-in apps

[JamieKavanagh]

The apps built into Windows 10 are pretty good but there are hundreds of alternatives out there to try. If you’re anything like me you will have spent many an hour uninstalling the default apps and trying replacements. You may find them better, you may not. With all that in mind, if you need to uninstall and reinstall Windows 10 built-in apps, here’s how to do it.

Uninstall Windows 10 built-in apps
Some Windows default apps will let you uninstall them as you would any other, while others need a little more effort. We will need to use the PowerShell for those.

1. Right click on the app and select Uninstall.
Or:
2. Type or paste ‘PowerShell’ into the Search Windows box and open as an administrator.
3. Type or paste ‘Get-AppxPackage *AppName* | Remove-AppxPackage’. Change ‘AppName’ for the specific name of the application you want to remove.

You may have to check the app name before trying to delete it as not all of them are straightforward. For example, the weather app is called ‘bingweather’ and Movies and TV is called ‘zunevideo’.

Reinstall Windows 10 built-in apps
To reinstall the default apps in Windows 10, we need just one command. It will refresh all of the apps and replace only those you removed when you were experimenting.

1. Type or paste ‘PowerShell’ into the Search Windows box and open as an administrator.
2. Type or paste ‘Get-AppXPackage | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"’.
3. Wait for the process to complete.

Depending on your system, this process might take a little while. You may not even see the results until you check your Start Menu and see the default apps have returned.

More Windows tweaks are available here:
How to set up RAID in Windows 10
How to fix the Start Menu and Taskbar in Windows 10
How to change the system language in Windows 10

View all of our Windows 10 Tutorials