How to uninstall Microsoft Edge, and where Microsoft allows it

Where Microsoft allows it

Microsoft’s Windows blog of 16 November 2023, about changes for the European Economic Area, says “All apps in Windows can be uninstalled” and lists “Microsoft Edge, in the EEA” among the apps that gain an uninstall option. Settings, Apps, Installed apps continue to show all the apps installed on the PC, with the added ability to uninstall. That post was written for Windows Insiders, and we did not check how it behaves on every release version today.

Microsoft Learn, in its documentation of the policy called Specify uninstall behavior for Microsoft Edge (updated 18 August 2026), says the same for the other side: “Only users in EEA countries are able to uninstall Microsoft Edge if they choose to do so. Users outside of this area won’t be able to uninstall Microsoft Edge.” The sentence belongs to the description of the setting that decides, on a domain-joined device, whether a user’s Windows region setting allows it. So the Windows region setting, not a menu you have not found, is what decides.

For an administrator

The same Learn page describes what an administrator can do on domain-joined devices in the EEA, on Windows 10 22H2 and Windows 11 23H2 and later. If the policy is set to Enabled, Edge is uninstalled on all devices in the EEA where it is deployed and user data is kept; if set to Enabled and delete user data, the data goes too; if set to Disabled, all users in the EEA are prevented from uninstalling it. Learn adds that if Edge is uninstalled, applications, widgets such as News, Search and Weather, and any Progressive Web Apps that depend on Edge will no longer be available. To reinstall, an administrator can set the Install policy to Force Installs (Machine-Wide), which overrides the Uninstall policy.

Microsoft Intune has its own route. Its page on adding Edge says the app is uninstalled from devices in the selected groups if Intune previously installed it onto the device through an Available or Required assignment, and that a group assigned both to install and to uninstall keeps the app.

Outside the EEA: what the guides propose

The search results are full of ways round this, and none of them is in Microsoft’s documentation that we read. The page Microsoft itself titles “Uninstall Microsoft Edge” contains, in the text we read, no uninstall steps: it is a promotional page about Edge’s features. wikiHow says that “While you cannot remove Microsoft Edge the same way you can with other programs in Windows 10 & 11 (unless you live in the EU)” there are workarounds: a registry change that re-enables the Uninstall button, a free uninstaller called Wise Program Uninstaller, and an open-source PowerShell script. Of the uninstaller it says that Edge “might be reinstalled automatically later through a Windows Update”, and of the script that some Windows 11 users report that it has been patched.

A Medium article describes uninstalling from an elevated Command Prompt with a forcing option, written for Edge version 98 in February 2022; a Microsoft Tech Community reply recommends the paid Revo Uninstaller Pro; and IObit’s blog calls its own IObit Uninstaller a foolproof method. The first is not documented by Microsoft, the second is a user’s advice and the third is a seller recommending its product. We have not reproduced the commands, and we did not run any of them: Microsoft’s page on the policy says that what depends on Edge stops working, and it does not describe these methods.

What Microsoft documents instead

Three things are documented. The default browser is a setting in Windows: Settings, Apps, Default apps, then Set default for the browser you want; the page on the default browser covers it for three systems. Startup boost, in Microsoft’s policy documentation, “allows Microsoft Edge processes to start at OS sign-in and restart in background after the last browser window is closed”; and background mode, called Continue running background apps after Microsoft Edge closes, keeps Edge processes running after the last window closes, with an icon in the system tray that can always close it. For both, if the setting is not managed by an organization, the user can configure it in edge://settings/system. Turning them off stops Edge from running when you are not using it; it does not remove it.

If Edge slows the computer, the page on the memory error and the page on extensions cover the other causes. If you removed Edge and want it back, the page on a missing Edge has Microsoft’s repair and reinstall steps.