You’ll soon be able to uninstall Chrome web apps just like a native Windows app

Ben Schoon | Dec 23 2020 - 7:33 am PT

Google Chrome makes it pretty easy to install Progressive Web Apps or, PWAs, on your machine to where they feel like native apps. Soon, on Windows machines, you’ll be able to uninstall web apps from Chrome just like you can native apps.

As spotted by a Reddit user (via Android Police), Google has introduced deeper integration between Chrome and Windows 10. Now available in the Canary and Dev releases of Chrome and, eventually, stable releases, Chrome will put any Progressive Web Apps in the Windows app list. This means you’ll be able to do basic management of those apps from the Windows Settings menu including uninstalling them from the system.

In Chromium, this change was noted for the Edge browser, with a Microsoft engineer explaining the feature in a commit.

> PWA on Desktop Windows: Implement uninstallation via OS settings.
> When user uninstall a PWA from Windows Settings or Control, it also uninstall PWA from browser registrar.

Unfortunately, the feature isn’t readily available just yet. Instead, Windows users will have to add a command line flag to the Chrome shortcut in order for web apps to show up in Settings and, in turn, be able to uninstall them. Adding “–enable-features=EnableWebAppUninstallFromOsSettings” to the target in a Chrome Canary or Dev shortcut should do the trick.