in Windows Development & Utilities |

Removing Steam Games from Programs and Features (Add/Remove Programs) Windows

When installed, games from Steam are registered in Windows’ uninstall list as well as in Steam. The uninstall items in “add / remove programs” serve little purpose as they are links directly to Steam’s app management (easily accessed from Steam’s UI), and if you relocate your Steam folder these will become broken. The following is two commands to run and a downloadable batch file (also contains an admin check) that remove all Steam apps from the Windows uninstall list. I figure it may come in handy if someone can’t be bothered writing or doesn’t know how to write it themselves. You will need to run these with administrative privileges.

Download: remove-steam-uninstall-links-from-windows.bat (zipped)
sha1: cc540bc3e4022de0d45424e7bfd9b47045031b75

@for /F "delims=" %a in ('reg query HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall ^| findstr /C:"Steam App"') do @reg delete "%a" /f
@for /F "delims=" %a in ('reg query HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall ^| findstr /C:"Steam App"') do @reg delete "%a" /f
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29 Comments

  3. Thank you, it still works on in late 2024 on Win11 23H2. I’ve installed my whole library and the 3000 useless entries (i remove games just after completion) made my whole PC lock-up for some minutes when opening the Win10/11 “Installed apps” menu despite having a 7950x with 128GB of ram and a Gen 5 SSD.

    Reply to Anonymous

  4. Words can’t express how much I appreciate this. I’ve had Mass Effect stuck on there for months after I relocated my Steam folder.

    Reply to Anonymous

  6. The fact we have to resort to this to keep our PC’s clean of this junk is a travesty…. they should know better, some people have 200+ games.

    [ ] Check to place game shortcuts on desktop
    [ ] Check to place games in add/remove programs.

    Duh.

    Reply to TD

  14. I cleaned up the code a bit and added a counter for amount of items removed. Feel free to use :)

    @echo off

setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
title Remove Steam uninstall links from Programs and Features

net session >nul 2>&1
if %errorlevel% EQU 0 (
    set /a count = 0
    
    for /F "delims=" %%a in ( 'reg query HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall ^| findstr /C:"Steam App"' ) do (
        reg delete "%%a" /f >nul
        set /a count += 1
    )
    
    for /F "delims=" %%a in ( 'reg query HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall ^| findstr /C:"Steam App"' ) do (
      reg delete "%%a" /f >nul
      set /a count += 1
    )
    
    if !count! GTR 0 ( echo !count! item^(s^) removed! ) else ( echo No items removed. )
) else ( echo Missing Administrator Priveleges; right click script and choose 'Run as administrator'. )

pause
    Reply to Andy

    • FYI, the site stylizes your ” and ‘ which breaks your scripts. Was able to correct this and the script works great. I might try and echo out the names of each game…probably not though, lol.

      Reply to KRunyon

  18. Thank you, I’ve been looking for a solution to Radeon Settings opening *extremely* slowly for years, and AMD’s support is utterly worthless.

    They add profiles for every single Steam/Origin/UPlay title, and this is how they detect them – meaning there are thousands of slow-loading JSON objects read by the Settings app.

    So this solves more than one problem.

    Reply to Anonymous

  22. That batch file is forbidden, and making my own with the two lines provided results in an error.

    “Steam App”‘) was unexpected at this time.
    C:\Shortcuts>@for /F “delims=” “Steam App”‘) do @reg delete “a” /f

    Reply to Ritz

    • The code on the page is for when using these commands directly in a console window. In batch scripts tokens such as %a must appear as %%a and certain characters have to be escaped with ^ this is probably why it’s not working.
      As for the 403 error hopefully I or my host can fix this problem in the next few days. Edit: The problem with download is now resolved. Removed temporary file and link.

      Reply to Furgelnod

  24. @for /F “delims=” %a in (‘reg query HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall ^| findstr /C:”Steam”‘) do @reg delete “%a” /f
    is also useful for deleting Steam itself from the uninstall list for whatever reason.

    Reply to XS-Terrain

  25. Many Thanks, helped med clear up 400+ entries from programs and features.
    It really should be built into steam by default to not clutter up the program and features.

    Reply to Skuttis4u