Cleanup of the WindowsApps folder, a WinUtil Challenge?

[robsiera]

In windows 11 (probably earlier too) there is a protected folder C:\Program Files\WindowsApps. It holds the Apps but does not cleanup the old versions, ever.

Describe the solution you'd like
Remove obsolete versions/folders/files

Describe alternatives you've considered
ignore the waist of space

Additional context
It has been said that this is (almost?) impossible to accomplish. :-)
https://www.tenforums.com/performance-maintenance/185009-how-clean-up-windowsapps-folder.html#post2294527
And thus I thought it might be a perfect challenge for the WinUtils wizards.

[ArhumMK]

Bump, WindowsApps is one of THE worst things in modern windows where you'll also occasionally lead to corrupted installs due to MS Store screwing something up, at the very least cleaning up old versions would save up significant amount of space. Especially on laptops like mine where I have a 128gb SSD C (Windows) drive and a 1TB D drive

[ESJ1970]

run the following within an admin command prompt.
c:\windows\system32\rundll32.exe AppxDeploymentClient.dll,AppxCleanupOrphanPackages

this will move the orphaned packages into a C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Deleted folder.

After rebooting the machine the deleted folder gets automatically deleted, but only after a while....

If you can't wait, take full control of this folder and then delete it.

Hope that helps.

[robsiera]

Thank you for looking into this. At first it looked like your tick did not seem to solve the initial question.
After your suggested rundll32.exe instruction all old versions of existing applications seem to be untouched.
Only a handful made it into the "Deleted" folder, and yes that got cleaned up immedialty after a reboot.

But after a closer look they probably are not 'different' versions, as they have the same version number, only a different suffix.

So, yes, you tick might do the trick. I say 'might' because I did not check before executing if I really had some Orphan Packages.

Again, thx for your valuable reply.