Uninstalr - Batch uninstall software in Windows

[jv16]

I would like to introduce Uninstalr. It's a free tool for uninstalling software in Windows that I made.

Key Features

• Batch uninstall many apps at the same time.

• Supports unattended uninstallation of apps.

• Supports monitoring of new software installations.

• Also detects portable apps and previously uninstalled software leftovers.

• Shows all the data added to your system by installed software on a file by file basis.

• Shows all the data it will remove before starting the uninstallation.

• Filter and search the list of installed software.

• According to our benchmark, Uninstalr is the most accurate software uninstaller by leaving the least amount of leftovers when uninstalling apps.

• Supports detection and uninstallation of Microsoft Store, Steam, Big Fish Game System, Chocolatey, NuGet and Ninite installed software.

• Supports Windows Dark Mode.

• Supports Windows 11, 10, 8 and 7.

• Comes with these translations builtin: Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Czech, Danish, English, Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.

• Has a single executable file portable version and a normal setup version.

• Uninstalr is freeware, lightweight and easy to use. No bells and whistles, no nonsense.

The mentioned comparison benchmark against other popular uninstallers (i.e. Bulk Crap Uninstaller, Geek Uninstaller, HiBit Uninstaller, IObit Uninstaller, Revo Uninstaller and Total Uninstall), as well as the download are available at the app's official website:
https://uninstalr.com/

If you want to read more how I ended building this, I also wrote a blog post about it:
https://jv16powertools.com/blog/compari ... uninstalr/

If you have any feedback about the app, feel free to let me know!

[freakazoid]

Hey jv16, I checked out your blog post about your foray into uninstallers and I appreciate the attention to detail where you list where those other uninstall apps failed to satisfy your needs. You didn't like those ones, so you built your own!

Revo Uninstaller has been my go-to since it does neat stuff like catch those stray registry entries and leftover files from %localappdata% and %appdata%. This is a manual process in Revo after the regular uninstall process, but I like that I am able to control and see what I'm about to delete. In your blog post you mention that Revo leaves a bunch of leftover files, but did you include the manual process in that assessment? If not, after manual cleanup, does Revo still leave a bunch of leftovers?

I will most likely give Uninstalr a try when I'll need to uninstall something in the future though. Thanks for posting on these forums so other people are aware of your app, jv16!

[jv16]

Revo Uninstaller has been my go-to since it does neat stuff like catch those stray registry entries and leftover files from %localappdata% and %appdata%. This is a manual process in Revo after the regular uninstall process, but I like that I am able to control and see what I'm about to delete. In your blog post you mention that Revo leaves a bunch of leftover files, but did you include the manual process in that assessment? If not, after manual cleanup, does Revo still leave a bunch of leftovers?

I used the default uninstallation method in Revo, removing every leftover it recommended. You can see the exact way each uninstaller was tested in the video screen capture of the test being performed.

I will most likely give Uninstalr a try when I'll need to uninstall something in the future though. Thanks for posting on these forums so other people are aware of your app, jv16!

Thank you!

[Andrew Lee]

@jv16:

I just want to let you know I find it really impressive that you have done all this by yourself (with some help from ChatGPT ). Your blog post was hilarious, and the software is great, as least from the limited time I had with it. It found some leftover entries that I didn't know exist, and the detailed listing of resources occupied by each entry before uninstallation is super helpful. Haven't tried the "New Software Monitoring" feature yet, but I am sure I will soon.

Just a quick question: How does the "Automatically reboot computer to finalize uninstallation" option work? Does it only reboot if necessary? I didn't enable it because I hate rebooting my PC unless 100% necessary, and with the couple of entries that I tried uninstalling, I was pretty sure rebooting wasn't necessary (eg. OpenSCAD).

Could you try adding Uninstlr to the database and putting the link here for a vote? I could do it myself, but I find that every time someone new does it, we typically find problems with the system that could potentially help improve it.

Thanks!

PS: And only 4MB! What is that?! Some "Hello, World" executables are larger than that now!

[DzejPy]

Be careful...
Uninstalr portable found TeamViewer installed (I use only portable versions) - i tried to uninstall it, the computer was restarted (without warning) after some process (deleting in CMD) and didn't start again... I had to restore Windows from a restore point. Be sure to create one!
The program looks interesting otherwise.

[jv16]

@jv16:

I just want to let you know I find it really impressive that you have done all this by yourself (with some help from ChatGPT ). Your blog post was hilarious, and the software is great, as least from the limited time I had with it. It found some leftover entries that I didn't know exist, and the detailed listing of resources occupied by each entry before uninstallation is super helpful. Haven't tried the "New Software Monitoring" feature yet, but I am sure I will soon.

Thank you! I'm glad to hear you like it!

Just a quick question: How does the "Automatically reboot computer to finalize uninstallation" option work? Does it only reboot if necessary? I didn't enable it because I hate rebooting my PC unless 100% necessary, and with the couple of entries that I tried uninstalling, I was pretty sure rebooting wasn't necessary (eg. OpenSCAD).

Right now, there is no detection whether a reboot is required, because adding such would add more complexity and things could go wrong. That's why it simply recommend a reboot always just in case.

Could you try adding Uninstlr to the database and putting the link here for a vote? I could do it myself, but I find that every time someone new does it, we typically find problems with the system that could potentially help improve it.

How can I do that?

PS: And only 4MB! What is that?! Some "Hello, World" executables are larger than that now!

Indeed. It's sad that these days app developers call their program lightweight and then it's 50 MB and no one bats an eye. I don't get it. I respect users of my software enough that I care that my software is always optimized, including not wasting the resources of user's computer.

[jv16]

Be careful...
Uninstalr portable found TeamViewer installed (I use only portable versions) - i tried to uninstall it, the computer was restarted (without warning) after some process (deleting in CMD) and didn't start again... I had to restore Windows from a restore point. Be sure to create one!
The program looks interesting otherwise.

The computer restarting is confirmed from the user within the UI. As you can see here: https://uninstalr.com/assets/screenshot ... nstall.png

I will have a try with TeamViewer to see whether I can reproduce any problems in uninstalling it.

EDIT: I have tested this reported issue and I can indeed confirm that I found a problem that can cause things to take a wrong turn when uninstalling TeamViewer. I have made two new levels of protection so this type of issue cannot happen again in the future. This will be included to the next released version.

Thank you for your feedback!

[Andrew Lee]

How can I do that?

Use the "Add entry" link at the main website:

[Midas]

I respect users of my software enough that I care that my software is always optimized, including not wasting the resources of user's computer.

And I for one wholeheartedly applaud that commitment -- I only wish more developers would adhere to similar principles...

[Pendrive]

DELETED

[FileHandler]

Purely subjective, others may disagree:

Pro:

• The results were very satisfying. It did the job thoroughly.
• The Filter fits my needs (don't list Windows components, only show software installed in the last 7 days)
• New Software Monitor ...

Con:

• The search for installed software takes at least a full minute, often longer. Geek Uninstaller does the same thing in a few seconds.
• The search kicks off right away when starting up the app. There is no Scan-Button. A bit unusual. If I just want to tweak some settings, or monitor new software installations, I still have to wait for the search to finish and bring up a list I do not even need.
• Interface issues: No alternate row shading. Sort order is not obvious, clicking on column headers does not highlight anything and does not produce up/down-facing triangles to indicate sort order. Typing a letter does not jump to the entry starting with that letter. Filter does not allow to enter an app name I am looking for. List font is small, cannot be customized. Some interface elements are even smaller:

[jv16]

[*]The search for installed software takes at least a full minute, often longer. Geek Uninstaller does the same thing in a few seconds.

This point needs some clarification. Geek Uninstaller does not do the same in a few seconds. What Geek Uninstaller and the majority of all other uninstaller programs do is they read the same list of installed software that Windows Apps listing uses. Reading that is trivial and that's why it only takes a few seconds.

What Uninstalr does is that it scans the entire system for installed software and leftovers. This is inherently a slower process, because it's a better analysis.

That being said, I'm working on making this faster. I agree, it should not take a minute. My goal is that the average scan time would be 15 seconds.

The search kicks off right away when starting up the app. There is no Scan-Button. A bit unusual. If I just want to tweak some settings, or monitor new software installations, I still have to wait for the search to finish and bring up a list I do not even need.

I wouldn't call it unusual, as this is how every uninstaller works. However, I do see your point. Perhaps there should be an option to have a screen with some settings and a Scan button. This is an interesting idea, thank you!

Interface issues: No alternate row shading. Sort order is not obvious, clicking on column headers does not highlight anything and does not produce up/down-facing triangles to indicate sort order. Typing a letter does not jump to the entry starting with that letter. Filter does not allow to enter an app name I am looking for. List font is small, cannot be customized.

These are good points, thank you! I tried alternate row shading, but I thought it looked rather ugly, and besides, it's not a standard feature in Windows (i.e. no lists in Windows UI does that either, as far as I know). But it could perhaps be an optional feature.

The default sort order should be sorting by app names, but I fully agree that there should be a sort order indicator triangle in the sort column.

How the filter doesn't allow you to enter the app name you are looking for?

The font sizes should be the default Windows ones. I will re-check this to confirm. If they are not the default recommended Windows font size, I will adjust them to be that.

Thank you for your feedback!

[FileHandler]

The search kicks off right away when starting up the app ...

I wouldn't call it unusual, as this is how every uninstaller works.

Indeed, you are right. It did not occur to me, because their lists come up so fast. Whereas your list takes forever, especially on the first run. But I do understand that your method is far superior.

Maybe you could add a button for "Deep Scan".
From a user perspective, when I start an app I want to interact with it right away, orient myself, browse the interface, the options, feel at home, sort of. Being forced to sit idle and watch a seemingly frozen progress bar, well, it threw me off.

I tried alternate row shading, but I thought it looked rather ugly, and besides, it's not a standard feature in Windows

Good point.
Guess I mentioned row shading as an attempt to make the list more readable. Debatable and very subjective. I am not getting younger and — truth be told — font sizes could be larger in almost every app I get under my fingers these days.

Blame it on Windows and their lack of customizing options compared to earlier versions, blame it on hi-res monitors — I have come to appreciate software that allows me to crank up their font size in the app itself.

I had no problem reading your logo.
Stark contrast to the tiny speck of a hamburger menu. Took me a good while to spot it, so I could finally start interacting with your app.

How the filter doesn't allow you to enter the app name you are looking for?

You don't recall the exact name of an app, it had something with "con" in it. So you enter that into the filter box:

[Emka]

Thanks for presenting this app here. Although I mostly use portable software, from time to time an uninstaller is necessary to get rid of non-portable software I wanted to test or needed for work, or to kill junkware that came with the machine.

I did not really have the chance to test uninstallation with Uninstalr, but I started the app to have a look at it. I too find it awkward that Uninstalr starts detection right away without any chance for the user to interact with the app first. Concerning portable software, it detected apps with a PortableApps.com launcher, of which I use a few. Would it detect other, similar launchers or wrappers, too? Concerning leftovers, I'm not sure if they would be listed under a special category (akin to Normal, Portable, Microsoft store) if there were any.

[jv16]

Maybe you could add a button for "Deep Scan".
From a user perspective, when I start an app I want to interact with it right away, orient myself, browse the interface, the options, feel at home, sort of. Being forced to sit idle and watch a seemingly frozen progress bar, well, it threw me off.

I agree. I will address this for the next version.

Blame it on Windows and their lack of customizing options compared to earlier versions, blame it on hi-res monitors — I have come to appreciate software that allows me to crank up their font size in the app itself.

The standard way to do this in Windows in Display Settings > Scale and layout. The default value is 100%, if you increase that, all apps should show up bigger, including their font sizes. Uninstalr follows this setting, too. That is why there is no font setting within the app.

However, I don't really see the harm in having some kind of "use bigger fonts" setting within the app. I think I'll add that.

You don't recall the exact name of an app, it had something with "con" in it. So you enter that into the filter box:

This is also how the search box within Uninstalr works like. Just type "con" and it will show only all apps whose name or publisher name contains "con". The only difference to the screenshot you included is that Uninstalr doesn't visually show the search hits per each row.