Apps: Packages of unwanted & preloaded software (including previous versions of said packages).My “minimal” Windows 10 install for work is roughly 9.5 GB in size.Īn installation of Windows usually has the following things take up space that you can free, depending on your use case: It’s also great to have a small virtual machine of Windows around for web development purposes.

I like the idea of a minimal installation, after all. So, it was time to clean up the junk! A minimal installation of Windows It also came with some pre-installed software that I didn’t end up needing.

Unlike my main desktop, which has ample storage, the Surface Go that I bought only came with a relatively small 128 GB solid state drive. For me, that means programming work gets done on the Mac, and all the other stuff happens on my PC. Just use the platform that is right for you. PC - it’s never sat right with me, really. The Windows folder inside the VM itself takes up 8.3 GB (according to Windows Explorer), down from ~12 GB.īetween the Surface Go and my desktop computer, I use Windows on a daily basis: just like I use macOS daily for my job. This virtual machine takes up roughly 9.5 GB of storage on my Mac. (I think more people who develop on Macs should be using virtual machines to look at their sites on Windows…)Īs you can see, on my virtual machine for work, I only have a few browsers and a limited selection of apps installed. This might be beneficial if you have a physical device with limited storage capacity, or you’re running a virtual machine. In this post, I’d like to share how I manage the size of my Windows installation and save a ton of storage space by removing some of the built-in apps. In my last post, I wrote about my Surface Go. When performing these operations, please take care to make a backup first! If you don’t care about the intro, you can skip to the things you can do. 👋 Some instructions here also apply to Windows 11.

Minimal windows 10 virtualbox image