Over time, a lot of programs accumulate on the computer that serve various purposes, from media playback and internet browsing to image editing, etc. But when you think about saving storage space on the small capacity hard drive in your device, or you want to take the first steps in improving the performance and speeding up your computer, you may face some difficulty in getting rid of programs that you do not need as it requires going through each program and uninstalling it individually, which takes a lot of time to remove a group of programs. But did you know that Windows includes a tool that allows you to uninstall multiple programs at once? Let us introduce you to it and how to use it starting from the command prompt (CMD).
In the modern versions of Windows 10 or Windows 11, there is a very useful tool that Microsoft has added called “Windows Package Manager” which allows managing everything related to programs through the command prompt, whether CMD or PowerShell, so that through the [winget] command you can download and install programs on the computer as we explained in detail earlier, in addition to the possibility of updating installed programs in bulk, and also saving a copy of programs to reinstall them on another device or the same device after installing a new copy of Windows. Today, we will explain another function, which is uninstalling multiple programs at once.
But before we start, it is important to clarify a very important point, which is that the Windows Package Manager tool allows installing, updating, or uninstalling only the programs that it supports, not all programs designed for Windows. This does not mean that it is useless, at all, as the database includes more than 4,000 programs so far, and the number continues to increase almost every day. So, you will likely find most of the programs you use, including browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox, and Opera, communication programs like Zoom, WhatsApp, and Skype, media players like VLC and Spotify, game libraries like Steam and Epic Games, and even developer programs like Visual Studio Code and Notepad++.
To facilitate finding the programs supported by the Windows Package Manager tool that need to be removed from your device, I recommend using Winstall website, which allows us to search the list of supported programs, in addition to grouping the programs in an installable package with one command. But we can make a simple adjustment on this command to replace the installation process with uninstallation, let us explain how.
After visiting the website, go to the Apps section and use the search bar “Search for apps” to enter the name of the first program you want to uninstall, and when you find it in the results, click on the plus sign (+) to add it to the list. Continue to do so until you add all the programs you want to delete from your device, and when you finish, click on the “Generate Script” button below.
Read also: 4 steps to completely remove computer programs manually
After that, a code or command will appear that is executed through the command prompt, but it will install the selected programs. Since the goal here is to remove these programs and not install them, we need to edit it to be an uninstall command. This process is very simple, all you need to do is click on the “Copy to clipboard” button at the bottom to save the command to the clipboard.
Then, open the “Notepad” application in Windows by searching or from the start menu, then paste the command by clicking “Paste” that we copied from Winstall website, and then click on the Edit menu from the toolbar and select Replace, or instead, press the Ctrl + H keys together to bring up the replace text window. Now, in the Find what field, type the word “install” and in the Replace with field, type the word “uninstall”, then click the Replace button.
After editing the command, copy it again, then open the command prompt (Command Prompt) on Windows in any of the ways we reviewed before, but the easiest way is to press the Win + S (S) keys together on the keyboard to open the search bar and then type “CMD” or “Terminal” if you are using Windows 11, then from the search results click on the “Run as administrator” option to run the command prompt with administrator privileges.
Once the CMD or Terminal window appears, paste the command by right-clicking inside the window with the mouse or pressing Ctrl + V keys together, then press Enter to execute the command. Now, it will check for the presence of these programs on your device and uninstall them one by one automatically silently, so all you have to do is wait until the message “Successfully uninstalled” appears as shown in the attached image above — that’s all there is to it!
