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

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  • 19
    CCS 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
    Aug 17, 2015 at 20:29
  • 13
    @GhillieDhu that is not correct for upgrades. Please see blogs.microsoft.com/firehose/2015/05/14/…
    – Doktor J
    Aug 17, 2015 at 20:52
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    I 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
    Aug 17, 2015 at 22:11
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    @GhillieDhu it's possible that the Pro/Enterprise flavors and/or pre-launch upgrades do not install it. Dunno about clean installs.
    – Doktor J
    Aug 18, 2015 at 1:40
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    Minesweeper 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
    Aug 18, 2015 at 19:10

8 Answers 8

Reset to default
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.

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4
  • 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
    Aug 17, 2015 at 19:15
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    And 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
    Mar 24, 2017 at 18:30
  • When using nirsoft.net/utils/url_protocol_view.html you see that even after uninstalling ... bubblewithsaga3 and candycrushsodasaga are still installed as ... url protocol handlers.
    – edelwater
    Dec 30, 2018 at 3:16
  • See @dark-daskin's answer below for a more complete answer.
    – pdwalker
    Feb 13, 2020 at 5:28
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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

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  • 9
    I 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
    Aug 17, 2015 at 15:55
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    Shouldn't it be in the "turn windows features on/off" area of programs?
    – Raystafarian
    Aug 17, 2015 at 16:56
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    @Raystafarian, in a perfect world, operating systems wouldn't come with bloatware, and it shouldn't come preinstalled at all.
    – Guntram Blohm
    Aug 17, 2015 at 19:08
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    @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
    Aug 18, 2015 at 8:52
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    I 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
    Mar 10, 2017 at 17:45
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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.

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7

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.

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4

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
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  • 1
    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
    Feb 13, 2020 at 5:25
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// 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

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3
  • 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
    Aug 15, 2016 at 9:31
  • @Toby this is what my comamnd does, but this no longer works in 1607, only for Enterprise/Education
    – magicandre1981
    Aug 15, 2016 at 13:27
  • Yep, just making it explicit for people that didn't want to add a file. did not realise it has changed under 1607 :(+
    – Toby
    Aug 15, 2016 at 14:02
0
  1. Unpin from start menu (if you never left clicked on it like me, it may be just an "ad" - so not installed yet)
    unpin
  2. If it was started/installed already (alternative to PowerShell): remove per machine with 1 MB program O&O AppBuster remove per machine
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-4

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.

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  • doesn't answer the question correctly, especially on machines with multiple logins.
    – pdwalker
    Feb 13, 2020 at 5:26

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