De-Enshittify an Existing Install of Windows 11 ⭐

Note: This is an early peek at a chapter from my next book, De-Enshittify Windows 11. This book will be available for purchase soon, hopefully by the end of February.  --Paul

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If you want to de-enshittify Windows 11 but find starting over from scratch to be daunting, then this chapter is for you. Here, you will learn how to thoroughly clean any existing Windows 11 installation, automatically removing bad behaviors like telemetry, preinstalled crapware, and even major enshittification vectors like Microsoft Edge and OneDrive, if desired.

As with the clean install approach to de-enshittifying Windows 11, the tool you will use to achieve this is free. But unlike the Tiny11 Builder utility described in that chapter, the tool I document in this chapter, called Win11Debloat, is flexible and granular, so you can eliminate the parts of Windows 11 that you despise while retaining those you value.

Tools that de-enshittify Windows predate the term enshittification by decades, and you may be familiar with some that sought to "clean" or "debloat" Windows over the years. These tools were often designed to strip Windows down so that it could run on lower-end or older PCs with less RAM and storage or allow more configuration options than Microsoft provided in the product itself. Today's de-enshittification tools work similarly, but the emphasis has shifted to include removing behaviors that are objectively bad for users. Of course, these tools also let you clean and trim down the size of Windows 11 if that's your goal.

As you might imagine, there are many options out there. But rather than offer a rundown of some of the better tools, I am instead focusing on a single tool because it meets all the de-enshittification needs one might have and it works very well.
? De-Enshittify Windows 11 with Win11Debloat
Like Tiny11 Builder, Win11Debloat is a PowerShell script that you can execute remotely from Windows 11. But once Win11Debloat runs, it uses a friendly graphical interface by default, making it more approachable to mainstream users.

To get started, navigate to the Win11Debloat page on GitHub with your web browser and scroll down to the "Quick method" instructions under "Usage." Per those instructions, open a Terminal window with administrator privileges and run the following script:
& ([scriptblock]::Create((irm "https://debloat.raphi.re/")))
The script will download the app and, after a User Account Control (UAC) dialog, Win11Debloat appears.

Win11Debloat is deceptively simple, consisting of just three main screens. But there are many dozens of options across those screens, and it's important to pay attention and choose wisely. From a high-level perspective, Win11Debloat helps you to:

Uninstall apps, including apps like Microsoft Edge that are normally impossible to uninstall
Configure many individual Windows 11 features, including some, like forced telemetry, that are normally impossible to disable
Determine if the...