Bloatware: Complete Guide

This guide provides a clear overview of bloatware, including the main concepts, practical steps, and common questions. Use it to understand the topic, compare the available options, and make a more informed decision.

If this is the situation you're in, you're most likely wondering how much storage space these pre-installed apps take up on your PC. A new report from Oofhours sheds some light on this question.

Through a few PowerShell tricks, Oofhours engineers figured out the size of default Windows 11 apps. As can be seen in the screenshot below, the apps are sorted in descending order of size (in bytes). In which, Microsoft Teams is the largest application when it takes up 91MB of storage space.

However, anomalies have been recorded when some applications such as Microsoft Store Purchase are confusingly lightweight, only 11kB. Several other studies have been done to clarify this issue. The results show that there seem to be two separate folders for this application, and if combined, the actual total size of this application is about 37MB.

Of course, this is not the case only with Microsoft Store Purchase. After reviewing and summarizing, the Oofhours team has come to the conclusion that Windows 11's default applications are taking up about 1.6GB of storage space on the system.

To be fair, this is not a large number for modern PC systems, but also not small for those who rarely or never use these applications.

If you want to check the size of all installed apps on your Windows PC via PowerShell (including default apps and apps downloaded from Microsoft Store), you can simply launch PowerShell using use the script below:

Get-AppxProvisionedPackage -online | % { # Get the main app package location using the manifest $loc = Split-Path ( [Environment]::ExpandEnvironmentVariables($_.InstallLocation) ) -ParentIf ((Split-Path $loc -Leaf) -ieq 'AppxMetadata' ) { $loc = Split-Path $loc -Parent } # Get a pattern for finding related folders $matching = Join-Path -Path (Split-Path $loc -Parent) -ChildPath "$($_.DisplayName)*" $size = (Get-ChildItem $matching -Recurse -ErrorAction Ignore | Measure-Object -Property Length -Sum).Sum # Add the results to the output $_ | Add-Member -NotePropertyName Size -NotePropertyValue $size $_ | Add-Member -NotePropertyName InstallFolder -NotePropertyValue $loc $_ } | Select DisplayName, PackageName, Version, InstallFolder, Size

Note that the "WindowsApps" folder is usually hidden by default, so you should unhide it first.

Conclusion

Understanding Bloatware makes it easier to compare options, avoid common mistakes, and apply the information in this guide more effectively. Review the relevant requirements before making changes or choosing a solution.