Microsoft puts its Edge browser on all new devices running Windows 11 this holiday season. As explained in a previous post, you can uninstall Microsoft Edge on Windows 10, but it’s best to just leave the browser unused on your desktop instead of uninstalling it.
You’re better off using a different default browser on Windows, but that might not be good enough for you. You might feel like Microsoft is forcing you to use their browser and you want to eradicate every “Microsoft Edge” related process on your Windows 11 PC.
Uninstall Microsoft Edge
If you still just want to know how to uninstall Microsoft Edge and get on with you life, here’s what to do.
- Open a new browser window in Microsoft Edge and paste the following into the address bar to find the Edge version number:
edge://settings/help.
- Cut and paste the following address:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application\{Version.Number}\Installerin File Explorer.
- Open a new Command Prompt window as an admin within the folder and paste the following command and press Enter:
setup.exe --uninstall --system-level --verbose-logging --force-uninstall. - The Microsoft Edge browser is now removed from Windows 11.
Now, these steps will help you remove the Edge browser only, if you see other processes in the background, like “Microsoft Edge WebView2,” don’t get angry, the browser didn’t reinstall itself on your PC.
Why it’s not a good idea to uninstall Microsoft Edge
If you uninstall Microsoft Edge without having a different browser like Chrome installed on your machine, you might be unable to access and browse the internet. So make sure you download a different browser like FireFox, Brave, or Vivaldi before you remove the Edge browser completely.
Another reason why you shouldn’t uninstall Microsoft Edge: is WebView2. The Microsoft Edge WebView2 runtime is used by third-party app developers to display web content within Windows apps. You can’t uninstall Microsoft Edge WebView2 because Windows 11 requires WebView2 for running underlying apps and processes running in the background on your PC.
Before using WebView2, developers would need to include a separate HTML engine that would take up a considerable amount of additional app space and development time. Since Windows 11 uses WebView2 for so many things, Microsoft decided to make it impossible to uninstall Microsoft Edge on Windows 11.
What do you think about Microsoft’s position that its Edge browser “is an essential component of our operating system and can’t be uninstalled?” Let us know in the comments.
