De-Enshittifing Windows 11 Version 25H2: Win11Debloat ⭐

Tiny11 Builder has proven itself to be an effective way to de-enshittify Windows 11, but it comes with one major downside: You have to clean install the OS. Like many of you, I’ve tried numerous utilities designed to de-enshittify existing Windows 11 PCs without requiring a clean install. But now that I know what Tiny11 Builder can do, I’ve specifically narrowed the search to those utilities that can do what I can accomplish with Tiny11 Builder.

That is, it must:

• Disable all telemetry
• Remove any preinstalled crapware
• Help remove Microsoft Edge bad behaviors (by uninstalling it)
• Remove Microsoft OneDrive bad behaviors (by uninstalling it)

Beyond those capabilities, I use a few other utilities to clean up Windows 11, including:

• Rufus to create installation media without the forced Microsoft account (MSA) sign-in or hardware requirement checks
• MSEdgeDirect to use my default web browser for stories from Widgets, web-based search results, etc.
• ExplorerPatcher to fix the performance and reliability issues in File Explorer

The goal here is to overcome all the problems I previously identified in my Windows 11 Enshittification Checklist. This appears to be the case when I install Windows 11 using Tiny11 Builder and the three utilities listed above. But what about existing Windows 11 installs? Can I use a de-enshittify utility along with most or all of those other three utilities to achieve the same effect?

I think I can.

I’ve been experimenting again with Win11Debloat, one of the more well-known Windows 11 de-enshittify utilities. It’s not the most user-friendly way to do this, but it seems to meet the need. It’s also changed a bit since I last wrote about it in August 2024. At that time, you would download the tool in PowerShell script form and run it locally, which required you to first disable a built-in script execution block in Windows 11. But now, you just run a Terminal instance with admin privileges and use a specific command line to download Win11Debloat and run it on the fly.

As before, it’s a script and it presents three top-level choices: Default mode, Custom mode, and App removal. And as before, I have largely ignored that first choice, as I want to configure what gets killed and what stays.

App removal is straightforward: You get a UI the lists all the apps this thing can uninstall, though it makes more sense to just filter the view to “only installed apps” first. Then, just make sure the apps you would like to uninstall are checked. You can use this to uninstall Edge and OneDrive.

The second choice, Custom mode, is more powerful. This steps you through various tasks, including the app removal noted above, so it’s a superset of that. Available items include:

• App removal
• Disable telemetry and other tracking
• Disable tips, suggestions, and the like
• Disable and remove Bing web search, Bing AI, and Cortana (with an option for Disabling Copilot, Recall, and Click to Do)
• Disable Windows Spotlight on desktop
• Enable dark mode
• Disable UI effects
• Restore the old Windows 10 context menus
• Disable enhanced pointer precision (mouse acceleration)
• Disable Sticky Keys
• Disable Fast Startup
• Disable network connectivity during Modern Standby
• Make changes to the Start menu
• Make changes to the Taskbar and related services
• Make changes to File Explorer

Given all that, it’s clear that Win11Debloat does meet the de-enshittification standard set by Tiny11 Builder. In fact, it exceeds it pretty dramatically by adding some useful additional features, like the ability to disable Sticky Keys (and, depending on your needs, whatever else). It’s possible that its And Win11Debloat appears to work well with Windows 11 on Arm, in addition to more standard x64 installs.

So far so good, in other words. I will begin using this across multiple PCs and see how it fares after system updates, as I’ve been doing with Tiny11 Builder.

You can learn more about Win11Debloat on GitHub.