Even with the latest improvements made to phones and other mobile devices in terms of cameras and on-device photo editing applications, the computer remains the preferred medium of choice when it is time to get some serious photo editing done. And whether you’re a novice just trying to retouch an image for social media or a professional doing complex image manipulation, you’re spoilt for choice over which app to use.
Windows is seriously stacked with apps that offer photo editing functionality. And not all of them are third-party software. Windows 10 users must have noticed the presence of the Paint 3D app. This application lets you add lots of effects, including 3D effects, to your photos. This particular attribute of the app gives it a solid advantage over the lesser-spotted MS Paint app in the eyes of most Windows 10 users.
However, many people, especially professionals, just don’t care for the photo editors pre-installed in Windows. Graphic artists and other creative types would rather work with professional-grade tools like Adobe Photoshop or Corel PaintShop Pro or even GMP. These programs have far, far more features than Paint 3D; understandably, they’re more popular out there.
If you’ve downloaded one of these photo editors, you might begin to feel that an app like Paint 3D is just taking up space on your computer. The best thing to do is to uninstall it and free up extra space you can use for files or downloading another app that is rather more useful to you.
There are four ways to get rid of the Paint 3D app on your Windows 10 PC:
- Start menu
- Settings
- PowerShell
- 3rd-party application
Read on to learn how to completely remove the Paint 3D app from Windows 10.
How to uninstall Paint 3D app from Windows 10 Start menu
This method takes advantage of one of the new features incorporated into the latest release of Windows 10. Before now, this method was unable to be used, but now that it’s been added, you can easily get rid of unwanted apps by finding them through Search in the Start menu and uninstalling them once they show up in the results. To remove Paint 3D from your Windows 10 PC through this method:
- Press the Windows key to bring up the Start menu.
- Type “Paint 3D” and wait for results to show up.
- Right-click the top result and select “Uninstall” from the context menu.
Paint 3D is gone. Were you to need the app in the future, you’ll have to get it from the Windows Store.
How to uninstall Paint 3D app via Settings
Using the Settings app is the preferred method of removing applications for many Windows users. One advantage this method has over the one above is that it also gives you a chance to remove other applications at the same time.
- Press the Windows key and type “settings”.
- Select System, then Apps and Features.
- Scroll down the list to the Paint 3D app.
- Click the app once to expand it.
- You will see an Uninstall button along with a Move button. Click “Uninstall”.
Congratulations. You’ve removed the Paint 3D app from your PC.
How to Uninstall Paint 3D app with PowerShell
Windows PowerShell is best thought of as the sibling of Command Prompt. You can use this shell command tool to fix, register and repair programs on your computer. You can as well use it to remove Paint 3D — and other applications — in one fell swoop.
One thing first: this only works when you run PowerShell in elevated mode. To the layman, this means running the prompt as an administrator:
- Press the Windows key to bring up the Start menu.
- Type “powershell” in the search bar and press Enter.
- Right-click the top result and select “Run as Administrator”.
- Click “yes” on the User Account Control prompt.
- The PowerShell prompt is launched.
- Copy the command below and paste it into PowerShell. Then press Enter:
Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.MSPaint | Remove-AppxPackage
- Close the PowerShell prompt once the process is complete.
How to uninstall Paint 3D app with 3rd-party program
There are loads of freemium and paid software removal programs on the net. Some can be found right in Windows Store. You probably have one you use on your system right now. Most of them don’t just uninstall the selected app, but they also (claim to) remove created folders, shortcuts, registry keys, save files, etc. that are often missed by Windows Uninstaller.
Once the Paint 3D app — and possibly MS Paint as well — is gone from your Windows 10 PC, you can focus on making your favourite 3rd party photo editor your default tool for that purpose. Programs like Adobe Photoshop come packed with myriad features, which means the app consumes a lot of computer resources when it is running.
Unless you have a modern computing beast with top-tier specs, chances are high that your PC will become slower while running Photoshop or its CPU-taxing, RAM-hogging peers. To mitigate this and ensure your computer performs at an optimum level round the clock, we recommend using Auslogics BoostSpeed. This performance software will find and remove junk files, clear accumulated caches, kill resource-draining background processes and allocate system resources efficiently, ensuring your PC is always smooth and efficient no matter what application is running.
