Debloat Windows 11 (2026): What to Remove, What to Skip

My own Windows 11 Home box is debloated. I know exactly what that means because I read it off the machine for this page: zero provisioned inbox apps left, 33 removable packages, every one of them something I installed or a codec, and every recommendation, advertising and web-search switch off. That is the finished state. This page is the route to it, in the order that costs you the least trust in other people’s scripts. Settings first. Then PowerShell for the apps Settings refuses. Then the two big scripts, for the switches Settings hides. And a clear line around what nothing on Home or Pro can switch off.

Before you start

Decide what you want. Debloating means four different things and people mix them up. Removing apps you never open. Turning off the recommendations and ads Microsoft threads through the Start menu and the lock screen. Cutting what the machine reports back to Microsoft. Disabling features like Copilot. The first two are safe and reversible from Settings. The third has a floor you cannot go below. The fourth is where the scripts earn their keep.

Do not expect speed. PCMag’s Chris Hoffman installed Windows 11 25H2 in a 4 GB virtual machine and measured 1.9 to 2.1 GB of RAM on a fresh boot with nothing removed. He then ran Chris Titus Tech’s Windows Utility, Raphire’s Win11Debloat, Tiny11 Builder and Tiny11 Core Builder, and wrote that “none of the four tools I tested made much of a dent in Windows 11’s RAM usage. At most, they saved 100MB or 200MB.” If your machine feels slow in games, the causes are on the stuttering page and the freezing page, and a debloat script is not on either list.

Know the floor. Microsoft’s diagnostic-data documentation lists four levels and says of the lowest, “Diagnostic data off,” that it “is only available on Windows Server, Windows Enterprise, and Windows Education editions.” On Home and Pro the floor is Required. Hoffman makes the same point about the scripts in his test: they can flip a policy value, but “Windows will ignore it unless you’re using a Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) version of Windows 11.” My own box has the AllowTelemetry policy set to 1, which is Required, and that is as low as it goes.

Know what cannot come back. Win11Debloat’s wiki says “To my knowledge, the only apps that cannot (easily) be reinstalled are the Microsoft Store itself and the XboxSpeechToTextOverlay,” and its app-removal page carries a warning on Windows Terminal: do not remove it if you launched the script from it. Leave the Store alone unless you have decided never to use a Store app again.

Make a restore point from Start, type “Create a restore point,” and hit Create. If Create is greyed out, select the system drive, choose Configure and turn protection on first. Then do the work.

Step 1: remove the apps (Settings, then PowerShell)

Microsoft’s own instruction is short: “Select Start > Settings > Apps > Installed apps. Find the app you want to remove, select More > Uninstall.” On my 25H2 box the page reads Apps > Installed apps in the breadcrumb, and every row has a More options button with Uninstall in it. Do this for whichever of the Xbox apps, Clipchamp, the new Outlook, Solitaire, News, Weather, To Do and Teams your box still has, and anything else you never open. Mine has none of them left, so I could not re-run the removals for this page. Microsoft adds that “Some apps can’t be uninstalled from the Settings app right now,” which is where PowerShell comes in.

Open Terminal and list what is installed:

Get-AppxPackage | Where-Object { -not $_.IsFramework -and -not $_.NonRemovable } | Select-Object Name | Sort-Object Name

That filter is the one I ran to get the 33-package figure above. Frameworks are runtime libraries other apps need. NonRemovable is Windows’ own flag for the shell pieces it will not let go; on my machine that second group holds 49 packages, and they stay. To remove one package for your account, Microsoft’s reference is Remove-AppxPackage -Package <full package name>, and it takes -WhatIf so you can see the effect before it happens:

Get-AppxPackage *Clipchamp* | Remove-AppxPackage -WhatIf
Get-AppxPackage *Clipchamp* | Remove-AppxPackage

The -AllUsers switch removes it for every account and needs an administrator terminal. Provisioned packages are the copies Windows installs for each new user account; Get-AppxProvisionedPackage -Online lists them, and on my box that list is empty, which is why a new account here starts clean. Removing provisioned packages needs Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -Online as administrator, and I would run the list first and read it before removing anything from it.

Step 2: turn off the recommendations and the ads

These are the toggles that make the machine feel debloated, and every one is in Settings. I opened each page on 25H2 to get the labels right; the values in brackets are what my box has.

Settings > Personalization > Start

• Show recommendations for tips, shortcuts, new apps, and more [off]
• Show recommended files in Start, recent files in File Explorer, and items in Jump Lists [off]
• Show most used apps [off]
• Show account-related notifications [off]

Settings > Privacy & security > Recommendations & offers (that is the page title on my 25H2 box)

• Personalized offers, “Get personalized tips, ads, and recommendations based on my Windows activity” [off]
• Advertising ID, “Let apps show me personalized ads by using my advertising ID” [off]
• Recommendations and offers in Settings [off]
• Improve Start and search results, “Let Windows improve Start and search results by tracking which apps I open” [on on my box; turn it off if app-launch tracking bothers you]

Settings > Privacy & security > Diagnostics & feedback

• Diagnostic data, “Helps to improve Windows and keep it secure, up to date, and working as expected” [reads Off on my box, and the page carries the banner “Some of these settings are managed by your organization,” which is what a policy value set by a script looks like from Settings]. Required stays on regardless, per the floor above.
• Improve inking and typing, “Send optional inking and typing diagnostic data to Microsoft” [off]
• Delete diagnostic data, further down the same page, clears what Microsoft has collected from this device.

Settings > System > Notifications > Additional settings holds the welcome-experience, setup-suggestion and tips checkboxes. Clear them.

Step 3: the switches Settings hides on Home

Two things people want gone have no toggle in the Home edition’s Settings app, and this is the only place I reach for a policy value or a script.

Web results in the Start search box. My box has the Explorer policy value DisableSearchBoxSuggestions set to 1 under HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer, and the Start search box returns only local results. It is the mechanism behind Win11Debloat’s default tweak “Disable & remove Bing web search, Bing AI and Cortana from Windows search”: the script’s own registry file for that tweak sets exactly this value. One Microsoft Q&A thread reports the value also disabling taskbar search on Windows 10 version 1903; on my 25H2 box the search box works and simply stops showing web results. Set it by script or by hand in the registry editor, then sign out and back in.

Copilot. The Copilot app uninstalls from Installed apps like any other Store app, and that is the removal that holds. My box also carries TurnOffWindowsCopilot set to 1 under HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsCopilot, and no Copilot package is installed, but read Microsoft’s note on that policy before you copy it: the WindowsAI policy reference marks it deprecated and says it “isn’t for the new Copilot experience.” Win11Debloat’s default list includes “Disable & remove Microsoft Copilot” and, on 25H2, “Disable Windows Recall” and “Disable Click to Do,” which map to the Recall and Click to Do policies Microsoft documents under Windows AI. Microsoft lists those policies for Pro, Enterprise and Education; Home is not on the supported-editions table, so treat them as unsupported on Home even where the value writes.

Step 4: the scripts, and what each one changes

Two scripts are the ones people land on, and both are open source with their change lists published, which is the only reason I would run either.

Win11Debloat (Raphire, release 2026.08.24, repository last pushed 2026-09-10). The README’s one-line run is & ([scriptblock]::Create((irm "https://debloat.raphi.re/"))) in PowerShell, or download the release and run Run.bat. Its default tweaks, quoted from the wiki: “Disable telemetry, diagnostic data, activity history, app-launch tracking & targeted ads,” “Disable tips, tricks, suggestions & ads across Windows,” “Disable ads, suggestions and the MSN news feed in Microsoft Edge,” “Disable & remove Bing web search, Bing AI and Cortana from Windows search,” “Disable & remove Microsoft Copilot,” “Disable Windows Recall,” “Disable widgets on the taskbar & lockscreen,” and “Show file extensions for known file types,” among others. It also removes a default list of apps that runs from the Bing apps and Solitaire to Candy Crush, Disney+, Netflix, Spotify and TikTok. One tweak to check before you apply: PCMag’s test says “the default settings disable Fast Startup in Windows,” which forces a full shutdown every time, while the tool’s own Default-Settings wiki does not list Fast Startup among its default tweaks. Read the checkbox state on your run rather than either of us. Reverting is documented: “Almost all changes can be reverted simply by running the script again and unchecking any tweaks you want to undo,” plus a Restore backup option and undo registry files shipped with the script.

WinUtil (Chris Titus Tech, release 26.08.19). Run irm https://christitus.com/win | iex from an administrator terminal; the README says it “must be run as Administrator because it performs system-wide changes.” It ships three presets, Standard, Minimal and Advanced, and points to config/preset.json for what each does. Hoffman’s finding on the Standard preset is the one to know before you click it: it “sets a large number of background system services to launch manually when programs access them, rather than automatically at boot,” which saved no meaningful RAM in his test and “might introduce delays in regular computer use.”

My rule for both is short. Run the manual steps first. Then open the script, uncheck everything you already did or do not understand, and apply the two or three switches you came for. A script that changes forty things you did not read about is not a debloat. It is someone else’s preferences.

Step 5: check that it worked

• Run the Get-AppxPackage filter from Step 1 again and count the rows. Mine is 33, and every name on the list is something I recognise.
• Open Start. No “Recommended” section, no app suggestions.
• Open Settings > Privacy & security > Diagnostics & feedback and confirm optional data is off. It will not say “off” for required data on Home or Pro, and nothing you ran changed that.
• Type a word into the Start search box and confirm the results are local only.
• Reboot twice. Microsoft makes no promise about what an update restores, and Hoffman warns that one “might reinstall parts of Windows you removed or otherwise undo your changes,” so check the list again after the next feature update.

If the reason you came here was a game that stutters or a PC that feels slow, the debloat is done and the cause is elsewhere: read games keep crashing for the launcher and anti-cheat faults, and the two settings pages that do move frame times, hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling and V-Sync on or off.

Sources

• Microsoft Support, Uninstall or remove apps and programs in Windows (Settings > Apps > Installed apps; “Some apps can’t be uninstalled from the Settings app right now”): https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uninstall-or-remove-apps-and-programs-in-windows-4b55f974-2cc6-2d2b-d092-5905080eaf98
• Microsoft Learn, Remove-AppxPackage (syntax, -AllUsers, -WhatIf): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/appx/remove-appxpackage
• Microsoft Learn, Configure Windows diagnostic data in your organization (the four levels; “Diagnostic data off” only on Server, Enterprise and Education): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/configure-windows-diagnostic-data-in-your-organization
• Raphire, Win11Debloat: README, Default-Settings, App-Removal and Reverting-Changes wiki pages; release 2026.08.24: https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat
• Chris Titus Tech, winutil: README and presets; release 26.08.19: https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil
• Microsoft Learn, WindowsAI Policy CSP (TurnOffWindowsCopilot marked deprecated and “isn’t for the new Copilot experience”; DisableAIDataAnalysis and DisableClickToDo): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/client-management/mdm/policy-csp-windowsai
• Raphire, Win11Debloat, Regfiles/Disable_Bing_Cortana_In_Search.reg (the registry file behind the Bing-search tweak; sets DisableSearchBoxSuggestions=1): https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat/blob/master/Regfiles/Disable_Bing_Cortana_In_Search.reg
• Microsoft Q&A, DisableSearchBoxSuggestions disables task bar search (a Windows 10 1903 report of the side effect): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/3234673/disablesearchboxsuggestions-disables-task-bar-sear
• PCMag, Chris Hoffman, I Put 4 Windows Debloating Tools to the Test. The Results Were Embarrassing, April 13, 2026 (RAM measurements, Fast Startup and services findings, the LTSC note): https://www.pcmag.com/explainers/i-put-4-windows-debloating-tools-to-the-test-the-results-were-embarrassing