How do I remove Candy Crush Saga from Windows 10?

168

33

Windows 10 comes with "Candy Crush Saga" preinstalled, but I do not want it on my system. How do I remove it?

Doktor J

Posted 2015-08-17T15:54:07.903

Reputation: 2 083

19CCS is not part of the default installation of Windows 10; that it came automatically on your machine could be due to OEM bloatware or the Windows Store automatically installing apps previously purchased on your Microsoft Account. – Ghillie Dhu – 2015-08-17T20:29:11.340

13

@GhillieDhu that is not correct for upgrades. Please see https://blogs.microsoft.com/firehose/2015/05/14/tasty-treats-incoming-to-windows-10-with-candy-crush-saga/

– Doktor J – 2015-08-17T20:52:34.587

I actually had to install it, because surprise, I like it, and it was not automatically preinstalled. – Arturo Torres Sánchez – 2015-08-17T21:35:02.547

17I stand corrected. I have three W10 machines, two were upgraded pre-launch (1 Enterprise & 1 Pro) & the third had a clean install from the MSDN subscriber download; none of them have CCS. – Ghillie Dhu – 2015-08-17T22:11:45.100

1

Related: http://superuser.com/a/942419/49695

– WernerCD – 2015-08-18T00:12:15.237

3@GhillieDhu it's possible that the Pro/Enterprise flavors and/or pre-launch upgrades do not install it. Dunno about clean installs. – Doktor J – 2015-08-18T01:40:01.707

@Devin None of my PCs or my friends' PCs have Candy Crush Saga preinstalled after upgrade – phuclv – 2015-08-18T05:36:27.263

3Can anyone explain to me what's the difference with this and having minesweeper preinstalled for example? These comments about choosing mac over pc for this reason made me interested. – Predelnik – 2015-08-18T14:39:36.283

3

When I bought an iBook running OS X 10.3, it came with Marble Blast Gold pre-installed. Windows 95 came wish Hover!… they were really great games, and nobody complained AFAIK. Ok, I dislike dearly Candy Crush too, and I definitely hate King, but… still this isn't very different. Pre-installed games are actually a nice thing. As long as you can uninstall and re-install them, of course.

– o0'. – 2015-08-18T14:58:14.067

10Minesweeper and Solitaire (and Hover! for that matter) are "in-house" games; Candy Crush Saga is a third party game -- that's the key difference to me at least. Add in the fact that I dislike and do not trust its publisher, and I am definitely not pleased with this being given to me as a "bonus". – Doktor J – 2015-08-18T19:10:21.020

@DoktorJ Well as I checked out pinball game which was distributed I believe with Windows XP was also developed by third party company called Cinematronics. Makes me wonder how all the people still hasn't moved to mac since those days long gone. Not that I don't admire your valiant effort to free precious 50 MB of course :) – Predelnik – 2015-08-18T20:47:20.997

2The games keep reinstalling automatically, even though I have uninstalled them before, and they are always placed at the top of the start menu. This is nothing like minesweeper. – Cuadue – 2017-03-24T18:28:57.963

3

Possible duplicate of How do you forcefully remove apps in Windows 10?

– sampablokuper – 2017-12-16T23:02:52.633

Possible duplicate of How to Remove Windows Store and other Universal Apps in Windows 10 Pro

– Ramhound – 2019-06-25T18:53:25.410

Answers

106

I was able to uninstall simply by right-clicking on the app in the Start Menu and selecting uninstall.

Typing Get-AppxPackage -Name king.com.CandyCrushSaga into PowerShell confirmed it is completely gone from the system, not just from the start menu.

Notso

Posted 2015-08-17T15:54:07.903

Reputation: 1 134

I will be upgrading my desktop shortly (if it lets me; I have my "Users" folder in a custom location, which apparently thwarted an upgrade to 8.1) as well as my fiancee's desktop. I will test this method on both of those -- if it works this is definitely a better answer! – Doktor J – 2015-08-17T19:15:57.243

9And how do you prevent Microsoft from reinstalling it for you because it knows better? Is there an appxpackage i can remove for "microsoft autonomously installing pay to win garbage trash, wasting my bandwidth and insulting my intelligence"? – Cuadue – 2017-03-24T18:30:48.963

When using https://nirsoft.net/utils/url_protocol_view.html you see that even after uninstalling ... bubblewithsaga3 and candycrushsodasaga are still installed as ... url protocol handlers.

– edelwater – 2018-12-30T03:16:57.787

See @dark-daskin's answer below for a more complete answer. – pdwalker – 2020-02-13T05:28:07.730

34

Since Candy Crush Saga is a preinstalled application, you won't find it in the "Programs and Features" control panel to be removed. Instead, you have to use the Windows PowerShell to remove it. Use the following procedure:

  1. Click in the search box in your Taskbar and type powershell; select "Windows Powershell" (not "Windows Powershell ISE" if that shows up).
  2. At the prompt, type Get-AppxPackage -Name king.com.CandyCrushSaga and press Enter (TIP: to copy/paste that command, copy as usual, then just right-click in the PowerShell window to paste).
  3. Look for the "PackageFullName" line in the result that comes up; it should be something similar to king.com.CandyCrushSaga_1.540.1.0_x86__khqwnzmzfus32.
  4. Copy the PackageFullName by left-clicking and dragging to highlight it, then right-click in the PowerShell window to copy the selected text.
  5. Type Remove-AppxPackage (include trailing space) and paste the PackageFullName that you copied in step 4, then press Enter.
  6. A teal-colored text dialog should come up showing the removal process, and then uninstall should be complete.
  7. Repeat step 2 to verify that it uninstalled successfully (the command should now return nothing).
  8. Lastly, confirm that Candy Crush Saga is no longer in your Start Menu.
  9. Enjoy a Candy-Crush-Free computer!

Source: Adapted from GHacks.net article on removing core apps from Windows 10

Doktor J

Posted 2015-08-17T15:54:07.903

Reputation: 2 083

9I wrote this specifically because I had a hard time finding how to uninstall the game when I was searching including the term "Candy Crush Saga". Hopefully this question will show up in results for future users wanting to remove it :) – Doktor J – 2015-08-17T15:55:17.643

2Shouldn't it be in the "turn windows features on/off" area of programs? – Raystafarian – 2015-08-17T16:56:59.063

14@Raystafarian, in a perfect world, operating systems wouldn't come with bloatware, and it shouldn't come preinstalled at all. – Guntram Blohm supports Monica – 2015-08-17T19:08:38.643

3@GuntramBlohm I meant, I don't have W10 available, but I don't see why it wouldn't be there, like regular games in other versions of windows.. – Raystafarian – 2015-08-18T08:52:58.803

1I have Windows 10 Home Premium. I was able to uninstall it from the installed programs list. I clicked on Candy Crush and the uninstall button appeared. It uninstalled like any other added program. – Sun – 2015-08-18T19:12:20.523

One thing that I can see here.. There is nothing to prevent re-installation of Candy Crush and or other apps. Sounds like a good place for a GPO/LGPO, yes I know it sounds like a workplace situation, but would be good for the home user that does not want these apps as well. – Leptonator – 2015-08-19T05:44:34.127

Does PowerShell not allow you to do something along the lines of Get-AppxPackage -Name king.com.CandyCrushSaga | Remove-AppxPackage ? – Neil – 2015-08-20T22:38:10.790

3I just noticed by accident in ProcessMonitor that Candy Crush Saga was updated in "C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\king.com.CandyCrushSodaSaga_1.85.500.0_x86(...)". The folder size is about 121 MB. But the program was deinstalled correctly in Powershell, i.e. the result of Get-AppxPackage *Candy*is empty. Any idea? – Thorsten Albrecht – 2017-03-10T17:45:59.150

14

First of all Candy Crush Saga is not a desktop program. So you can't find it "Programs and Features". It's an app just like in your mobile phone.

To remove the app,

  • You can just search for Candy Crush Saga (or just "ca" does the trick), right click on the app result and then click uninstall.

setp1

  • Or if Candy Crush Saga is pinned to start menu(usually it is) just right click and then click uninstall.

setp2

alternatively you can use the Windows Store or Powershell to remove the app.

miyuru

Posted 2015-08-17T15:54:07.903

Reputation: 259

5

Other answers point to the package name king.com.CandyCrushSaga, on latest Windows 10 Pro it is king.com.CandyCrushSodaSaga.

Regardless of the full name, run PowerShell as an administrator and execute:

Get-AppxPackage *CandyCrush* | Remove-AppxPackage

I'm not sure why this complicated answer was posted, but manual copy-paste steps are not required here.

techraf

Posted 2015-08-17T15:54:07.903

Reputation: 4 428

2

// In Windows 10 v1607, this is no longer working

A better way is to disable the install during Windows 10 install. Create an unattend.xml add this a add a RunSynchronous command to set the registry value DisableWindowsConsumerFeatures under HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\CloudContent to 1.

<RunSynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
    <Description>disable consumer features</Description>
    <Order>5</Order>
    <Path>reg add HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\CloudContent /v DisableWindowsConsumerFeatures /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f</Path>
</RunSynchronousCommand>

Or import this registry (.reg) file:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\CloudContent]
"DisableWindowsConsumerFeatures"=dword:00000001

Before it looks like this:

enter image description here

Now start menu is much cleaner:

enter image description here

magicandre1981

Posted 2015-08-17T15:54:07.903

Reputation: 86 560

The same thing can be achieved by using regedit to alter or create the DWORD key named DisableWindowsConsumerFeatures at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\CloudContent to a value of 1 and then restarting windows. – Toby – 2016-08-15T09:31:09.197

@Toby this is what my comamnd does, but this no longer works in 1607, only for Enterprise/Education – magicandre1981 – 2016-08-15T13:27:10.500

Yep, just making it explicit for people that didn't want to add a file. did not realise it has changed under 1607 :(+ – Toby – 2016-08-15T14:02:24.007

0

Removal form Start menu or the Get-AppxPackage | Remove-AppxPackage command only removes applications for the current user, but sometimes keeps them on disk.

Full removal requires specifying the -AllUsers switch and running the command as the SYSTEM user.

  1. Download and extract the PsExec utility.
  2. Run PsExec.exe -isd PowerShell.exe.
  3. In the new PowerShell window run Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers 'king.com.CandyCrushSodaSaga' | Remove-AppxPackage -AllUsers

You might also want do remove other 3rd-party games bundled with Windows:

  • king.com.BubbleWitch3Saga
  • A278AB0D.DisneyMagicKingdoms
  • A278AB0D.MarchofEmpires

Dark Daskin

Posted 2015-08-17T15:54:07.903

Reputation: 183

I am not sure why this was marked down as it is more correct. The -AllUsers flag is necessary to root all copies of the damn crapware foisted on us by Microsoft. PsExec.exe is not necessary though, just a powershell session run as Administrator – pdwalker – 2020-02-13T05:25:33.767

-2

Most Windows 10 Apps can be uninstalled by simply right-clicking and selecting "Uninstall". If it is still showing up as an ad, simply go to the Start Menu Settings, and disable "App Suggestions" and disable the live tile for the "Store" app on the Start Menu by right-clicking and selecting More > Turn Live Tile Off.

Matthew

Posted 2015-08-17T15:54:07.903

Reputation: 184

doesn't answer the question correctly, especially on machines with multiple logins. – pdwalker – 2020-02-13T05:26:19.297

-3

Windows 10 upgrade does appear include candy crush. I have a work machine that was game free and after upgrade found ccs installed. I cannot say 100% sure but it was definitely not in the start menu until after the upgrade. Uninstalling deletes it but you still need to go to regedit and click find and input candy and you will find a number of instances and keys. Delete them, don't worry it will not cause any problems as long as they say candy crush.

Rodney

Posted 2015-08-17T15:54:07.903

Reputation: 1

doesn't answer the question correctly, especially on machines with multiple logins. – pdwalker – 2020-02-13T05:26:15.867