Microsoft Says You Can’t Uninstall Edge Browser On Windows 10, But Here’s A Helpful Workaround
Earlier this year, the Chromium-flavored version of Microsoft Edge began to roll out with updates beyond Windows 10 version 1803. Even though it looks and feels nice, some users wished to remove all traces of Edge and found that they couldn’t, so we have a handy workaround.
It seems the issue of removing Edge became a bit of a regular complaint, as Microsoft has a support article talking about it. In this article, they essentially hand-wave away concerns by basically saying, “our platform is better and baked into Windows, so you cannot uninstall it.” The problem here is that if you tell people on the internet they cannot do something, they will find a workaround, and that they have.
German blog poster moinmoin, of Deskmodder.de, writes that an uninstall workaround has been found for removing Edge. The instructions are as follows:
According to moinmoin, this can also be done in the command prompt, but you have to navigate to the Edge install location and open command prompt there and then run the above command. If you have managed to avoid the Edge update being installed, there doesn't seem to be a way to block the update if you wish to continue updating Windows, so you'll have to follow the above instructions.
- In File Explorer, navigate to the path C: \ Program Files (x86) \ Microsoft \ Edge \ Application.
- Select the current version number folder
- Find setup.exe in the “Installer” folder.
- Now open the File -> PowerShell -> PowerShell (administrator) tab (or hold Ctrl+Shift+Right Click and click “Open Powershell Window Here”)
- Now enter the following command and press Enter:
setup.exe --uninstall --system-level --verbose-logging --force-uninstall
With a little bit of tech wherewithal, one can get rid of Edge even though they have been told they are not able. Hopefully, this handy workaround works for you and allows you to ignore Edge (unless you are using it to install another browser). Let us know if you decided to get rid of the new Edge browser and your reasoning in the comments below.
