Vanilla Windows 11 has a lot of pre-installed apps. Some of these pre-installed apps are excellent, but others are not so much. Regardless of how useful these apps are, Microsoft doesn’t offer an easy way to get rid of them, even if you don’t want them.

Case in point: Microsoft Edge. While I personally prefer Edge over Chrome, you can’t uninstall the browser without doing all kinds of gymnastics. Ironically, the uninstall option for Edge in the Settings app is greyed out, which means Microsoft chose to disable the option, at least for my region. That’s how I figured out that if I change the region to a European Economic Area (EEA) country and enable the Digital Markets Act, the uninstall option magically appears and lets me remove Edge.

What’s the Digital Markets Act (DMA)?

EU regulations that give users more control

The Digital Markets Act is a set of regulations that the European Union enforces on large tech companies, including Microsoft. Under DMA rules, companies classified as “gatekeepers” must give users the freedom to uninstall pre-installed apps, choose their own default browser, and opt out of data collection practices that are otherwise forced on users in other regions.

For Windows, this means PCs set up in an EEA country behave differently. Edge becomes fully uninstallable, and third-party browsers can be set as the default for all file types, including PDFs, in one step. You can also disable Bing in Windows Search without needing enterprise policies, and Microsoft apps are required to respect your default browser choice instead of overriding it with Edge.

Interestingly, Windows decides whether to apply DMA rules based on a single registry value called DeviceRegion. When you pick an EEA country like Ireland during setup, Windows sets this value and activates DMA mode. And since this is just a registry entry, you can change it after installation, too.

Remove Edge using Wintoys

A free app makes this a one-click process

The easiest way to enable the Digital Markets Act on your PC is to use Wintoys. It’s a free Windows utility that offers a centralized space for a lot of power-user tweaks in one place, allowing you to configure, optimize, and customize your system from a single interface instead of digging through scattered Settings menus and command-line tools.

After installing Wintoys from the Microsoft Store, launch the app and open the Tweaks tab. Expand the System section, and you’ll see a Digital Markets Act toggle near the bottom. Turn it on.

This automatically sets your Device setup region to Ireland, which is an EEA country. You can verify the change by going to Settings > Time & language > Language & region and checking the Device setup region field. It should now show Ireland, even if your Country or region still shows your actual location. Your country setting stays untouched, so things like currency format and local content won’t be affected.

Once DMA mode is active, head to Settings > Apps > Installed apps. You’ll notice that Microsoft Edge and Microsoft Bing now have working uninstall options that were greyed out before. Just make sure you install your preferred browser and set it as the default before removing Edge, so you’re not left without a way to browse the web.

Manually enable DMA

A PowerShell workaround if you prefer doing it yourself

If you’d rather not install a third-party app, you can enable DMA manually through PowerShell. The process is a bit more involved, but it works just as well.

The reason you can’t simply edit the registry value in the normal way is that Windows has a User Choice Protection Driver (UCPD) that blocks changes to protected settings, including DeviceRegion. But there’s a simple way around it. To do this, navigate to C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0 in File Explorer, and create a copy of powershell.exe in the same folder. You should see a new file named something like powershell – Copy.exe.

Now double-click the copied file to open it. Because UCPD monitors the original PowerShell binary but doesn’t recognize the copy, you can run registry commands without being blocked. In the PowerShell window, paste this command and press Enter:

Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Control Panel\DeviceRegion" -Name "DeviceRegion" -Value 0x0000044

This sets the DeviceRegion to Ireland, which is the same thing that happens when you choose an EEA country during a fresh Windows setup. Once done, close the PowerShell window and delete the copied file from the folder to clean up.

To verify it worked, go to Settings > Time & language > Language & region and check that Device setup region shows Ireland. If it does, DMA mode is active, and you can uninstall Edge and Bing from Settings > Apps > Installed apps just like you would with the Wintoys method.

If you ever want to revert, you can change the DeviceRegion value back to your actual country code. For the US, for example, the value is 0xf4. Microsoft maintains a full list of geographic region codes in its documentation.

A useful trick with a small trade-off

Enabling DMA mode is probably the cleanest way to remove Edge and Bing without running a debloating script that could break your system. The end result is a system state that is identical to what you’d get if you originally set up Windows in an EU country, so it’s not a hack that Microsoft can easily patch out.

That said, keep in mind that your Device setup region will show an EEA country, which is a cosmetic change but one worth knowing about. It shouldn’t affect day-to-day functionality since your actual Country or region setting stays the same. If you’re comfortable with that, this is an easy way to take back control over what stays on your PC and what doesn’t.