Back in the “good old days”, Windows users could take advantage of Google’s desktop web app launcher, and it was glorious. It was a tool that sat at the bottom left of your taskbar and provided all your Chrome apps in one place. Chromebook owners will think this sounds familiar because, well, the app launcher and “All button” have been around since day one!
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Unfortunately, Google killed it years ago, and back then it looked and acted the same as Chrome OS before the Peeking Launcher (and subsequently, the Productivity Launcher) became a thing. Now Windows Chrome users have seen their web apps relegated to their browser’s bookmarks bar or via chrome://apps. It seems hidden and inaccessible compared to the previous method, and if you wanted to uninstall something that you added to your desktop or laptop, you’ll need to access this URL to do so.
As a hybrid user who uses Windows for many things, it’s taken me a long time to figure out how to make Windows act more like a Chromebook, and it’s just not easy or great in the end. . Mainly, the problem occurs when you try to uninstall these web apps from Windows 10 or 11 – they just don’t show up in the list of programs like traditional software on the system.
You can and still technically can access the original Add and Remove Programs menu if you can locate it in order to see a list of onboard Chrome apps, but they don’t always show up, and even when they do, they don’t. not properly uninstalling or being removed from the registry in a nice and orderly manner. That has been my experience, at least.
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All of that is about to change, as the Chrome Canary and Dev versions of the browser implement an uninstall prompt through the OS settings. First discovered by Leopeva64-2 on Reddit, this will unify the experience of using Chrome apps alongside downloadable Windows software on Microsoft’s OS, and I couldn’t be happier!
Reland: “PWA on desktop Windows: implement uninstall via OS settings.”
When the user uninstalls a PWA from Settings or Windows Control, it also uninstalls the PWA from the Browser Registrar.
Chromium Gerrit
According to the commit where this showed up, it’s not quite finished yet. Users will currently have “–enable-features=EnableWebAppUninstallFromOsSettings” in their Chrome browser shortcut under “Target” after right-clicking it and going to “Properties”. Do you use Chrome apps on Windows or do you manually enter websites when you’re ready to visit them? Let me know in the comments if you use your Windows 10 or 11 like me or if you use Chrome OS!
