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Half of the native apps can be uninstalled with a right click.
Almost everything else can be removed by using Winget.
The very few components marked as absolutely not removable, like Edge and EdgeCore, can be removed by removing TrustedInstaller's inherited permissions. But if you do, you'll quickly realize they weren't lying when they said those core components are important for the system.
Edgecore sounds like a really exciting but actually bland genre of music.
Sounds like it would be all build-up and never a drop
Edge is completely safe to remove in my testing, at least if removed through the Chris Titus Utility.
It's mostly safe, many modern apps default to built in Chromium for their web views.
But you can encounter some that do not work. And, of course, the native Bing search bar also stops opening links correctly.
Even the Ameliorated Project playbooks work as well for the debloating/despywareing.
Didn't they lose a lawsuit about tying the browser into the OS?
You're thinking about anti-trust decisions back in the Internet Explorer days, and even after those, Windows always shipped with some version of a web view based on their browser, and always will.
So his Meme is correct the system will break if you force it to uninstall something?
No for 95% of packages.
Yes for packages that are indeed part of the system.
"Oh no I deleted a system file and now features that rely on that file don't work! How weird! Microsoft bad"
There's a "Getting Started" app built in to win11 that is both completely useless and totally unremovable by any method without breaking the OS.
That's because it's not an app. Do "Winget list" and you'll see it's not there.
It's part of the shell. Open it up, look at task manager, and you'll see it's not spawning new processes. Which also mean it's irrelevant - it doesn't add any background tasks, modifies any files or in anyway interfere with the users. It's quite literally just an icon created by the shell.
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Do you use Android? Chrome is the native WebView that a good chunk of your apps use. Without deep modifications, you can't use another webview. Do you use iOS? Safari not only renders any HTML component on any app, it's also the engine behind every single browser on the OS - Chrome on iOS is Safari with different clothing. Do you use an Xbox? A PlayStation? I could go on.
While Linux does indeed handle this differently, with most apps bundling their own web rendering engine, Windows and many other systems use one main core browser that other apps call when they need web pages. This is got many advantages and many disavantages. If you dislike it, fair enough - but let's not pretend this is unusual or somehow unjustifiable.
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Edge is the system WebView on Windows. Also, the Android System WebView is indeed UI-less Chrome.
So yeah, you know very little about this subject and it shows lol
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Its more of the dependency chain. I wouldn't consider tying your taskbar, web browser, and other microservices together like that a good thing in any ecosystem. Its not really the fact that removing system files breaks your system. Its that the taskbar and web browser should not be considered Core. People want to choose and not have their non-choice staring at them with their new gurl from the sidelines.
Ok but “Microsoft tied everything to their shitty browser and that’s bad”
Most things are probably fine, though Windows updates might do something funky or just put it back from where you threw out that trash.
But Edge is a different story. Microsoft in their infinite wisdom decided to make Edge, their web browser, essential for Windows Explorer, their file manager and desktop among other things, to function properly.
So if you get rid of Edge, things can get kinda fucky. I haven't looked into if someone has made a workaround, I know that there are modified "debloated" Windows installs that do some heavy duty mucking about in there, but I don't know if anyone's figure out how to give Edge the ax without making your desktop freak out.
That was definitely by design. I'm surprised they haven't done that with more of their other bloatware tbh.
You just need to install Edge WebView separately.
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Yes, though I'm pretty sure I've uninstalled or atleast disabled cortana with no problems
At some point this holds true for any and all environments.