Windows needs an option to remove apps from your library

Whenever you install a Windows Store application on a device running Windows 8 or 10, that application gets associated with your Microsoft Account.

One of the ideas of this is that it makes it easier to get those apps or games on other devices you own, to improve re-installation on the same device, and to keep track of your purchases.

You can manage all apps or games that you bought or installed on the Library page that is part of the Windows Store application.

There you find listed all apps or games that you have installed or purchased in the past. This includes applications from other devices and even other versions of Windows.

You can browse the selection or use search to find apps and games again, and install them on the current device.

That is handy as well even though you need to do so for each app or game individually.

Probably the biggest issue right now is that apps or games that you have installed or purchased previously are associated with the account permanently.

This includes free apps and trial versions, and even apps that are not compatible with the device you are running.

Here is why that is bad

1. The apps and games library listing gets filled with items that you may have no use for anymore. Maybe you installed a trial version of an application only to find out that it is not what you need. Even if you have plans never to install it again, it is listed on the library page.
2. The sheer number of applications or games may cause loading issues. The library pages load only every second time or so on my fast Windows 10 PC due to the large number associated with my account. While I cannot say that it is caused by the number of apps associated to the account, it seems plausible.
3. It becomes harder to find apps or games that you want to reinstall. While you can use search, you may not always know the correct name of the application anymore so that you need to resort to browsing.

I test dozens of Windows 10 applications each week for my weekly series over at Betanews, and all of those apps and games that I test remain linked to the Microsoft Account permanently with no option to disassociate them from it.

This means that I have hundreds of apps and games listed in the library sections in Windows Store, and even quite a few apps that are not even compatible with Windows 10, the only operating system that I use that supports apps (I no longer run a Windows 8 device and have removed all devices linked to the account as a consequence).

The apps section alone lists about 100 apps that are not compatible with Windows 10, and hundreds more that are compatible but won't be installed on the machine ever again.

Neither the Windows Store application nor your Microsoft Account control panel on the Internet provide options to remove obsolete apps from your account.

Additionally, I noticed that I cannot remove some apps completely anymore from the system. They show up with a loading indicator in the start menu but won't update and cannot be removed as the remove option is missing from the right-click menu.

I don't know if the issue is related or not, could also be a bug but it is quite problematic considering that I cannot remove those apps from the system anymore at this point in time.

Solution

I would like to see an option to remove applications from Microsoft Accounts. This should improve the usability quite a bit for users who install lots of apps or games, and users who like to keep their library as clean as possible.

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