The by default highly questionable set options concerning privacy and data protection in Windows 10 brought me to the idea for the development of this little program. Microsoft generously enables everybody to change the concerning settings, but hides them in countless menus, where a normal user does not want to search for!
The program should therefore be a help, to display the available settings relatively clearly and to set the desired options if necessary.
The primary focus is on settings for Windows 10 and its apps (for example the new browser "Edge"). The program will be expanded gradually, if possible and available, with the corresponding Windows 8.1 features in the future.
W10Privacy is certainly no programming masterpiece, but meets my envisaged purpose. The software is still in an early development phase: suggestions and requests will be gladly accepted and considered, if necessary, in the further development.
What's New
- Added over a dozen user apps that can now be uninstalled (Windows 11 23H2)
- Added over a dozen system apps that can now be uninstalled (Windows 11 23H2)
- Add/adjust various settings, not just for Windows 11 23H2
- Expansion of the tasks that can be deactivated
- Users regularly report that uninstalling the "Microsoft Edge" browser via W10Privacy would not work. In was able to verify that on many systems the native Edge uninstaller, for whatever reason, is simply not able to cleanly remove Edge. The messages that come up here are diverse, e.g. B. does the uninstaller first want to establish a connection to the Internet in order to "repair" the Edge installation before Edge is uninstalled?! At this point, I've had enough of the nonsense that Microsoft is spouting - the setting < Uninstall "Microsoft Edge" software > in the "Edge" tab continues to call up the standard uninstallation mechanisms in the first step However, if the Edge uninstallation is not successful, the new W10Privacy program version will now remove Edge "the hard way": stopping the associated services, removing the associated services, deleting the relevant entries in the registry, deletion of shortcuts on the desktop, deletion of created tasks, deletion of paths in the file system. The mechanics ran without any problems on my test systems, but as always there is no guarantee that this will work to the desired extent on other systems!