she/it

A powershell script to delete all the bullshit microsoft pushes in each update, like preinstalled a(d)pps or AI features or trackings. Just open powershell as admin and paste this line

& ([scriptblock]::Create((irm "https://debloat.raphi.re/")))

I personally suggest you go for option 2, custom mode, so that you can remove even more stuff manually, for example once you downloaded a non-chromium based browser you can delete Edge, and Notepad so you can switch for Notepads, cleaner and better looking version of the notepad with no ai inspiration mode or whatev, or you could try Notepad++

but you can do whatev anyway, if you change your mind you can always run the script again and choose a different option

You probably want a local account instead of having your computer forcibly tied to a microsoft account, to avoid being forced to make an account, during the setup click on set up for work or school when prompted, then on sign-in options, then domain-join instead and it should be done

But this method does not work for Home edition, so here's another method (I haven't seen if it works for myself), when setting everything up click Shift + f10 and write start ms-cxh:localonly and it should let you continue without intrusive ads/features being promoted all the time, if it doesn't work try entering oobe\bypassnro onto the command prompt instead, and make sure you are offline, the computer should not detect any connection, so unplug your ethernet or make your pc forget your wifi or turn your modem off

Now, for some reason (probably vibe coding used in the updates) the power off button on your computer might be taking a break instead of going home, to make sure it gets to be safely you need to go to Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options > click on the text on the upper left that says Choose what the power buttons do > set When I press the Power Button to Shut down > click on the blue text at the top that says Change settings that are currently unavailable and untick Turn on fast startup- MAKE SURE TO CLICK ON SAVE CHANGES AT THE BOTTOM BTW <:3 <- forgor to do that twice

To check if this problem is still accouring you need to open the Task Manager by pressing ctrl + shift + esc or right clicking the taskbar at the bottom of the screen (if you keep it in that position) and selecting Task Manager, now click on Performance and click on CPU, at the bottom you should see the up time with how much time the computer has been powered on for, if the number seems suspiciously high, like 83 hours (and you haven't kept it on for 83 or so hours) then your computer is not actually shutting down when it's supposed to

For some additional options you can download O&O ShutUp10++, this program will let you disable some other intrusive options/telemetry and data being sent to microsoft behind the courtain: first off (this is a useful thing to remember in general, it's time travel!) make a restore point by typying "create a restore point" and then on the bottom click on create and give it a name, this will let you revert changes that you made to your pc with your last backup if need be (to do so click the button that says "system restore" , click next, and choose your backup restore point, click on next again and finish) Now open O&O ShutUp10++ I suggest you check each tab and setting by yourself to see what settings you prefer turning on or off, but as a rule of thumb you can also just click on actions in the upper right and then apply only reccomended settings, do this both for the current user and the local machine, and lastly check the copilot tab; it should show you a screen like this one, but if it doesn't go ahead and click on disable, remove and securely erase

Foobar2000 - You should archive your music and get an extremely customizable audio player ready imo, it's handy when spotify removes songs without permission from the artists, pays them fuckall, puts up bands pretending to not be made with genai or runs ICE recruitment ads...

Revolt/Matrix - Eventually discord will drown in its own shit, so here's some alternatives

Mediahuman - Fave youtube to mp3 downloader app, it can mass download playlist and adds embeds too

Emulators - The emugen wiki has GREAT and LOADS info for emulating specific consoles, and links to archives of abandoned projects, like yuzu or ryujinx. extremely handy when the switch emulators trying to catch up to these two are already getting shut down before they can get to half of the compatibility list T-T

Disable windows updates - This will disable windows updates for 20 years or so, after the win11 24H2 updates whiped some hard disks I'm scared to update willy nilly

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Search Engines:

Starpage

DuckDuckGo

If you choose duckduckgo then go to the settings icon > All search settings > switch Hide AI-Generated images to ON

Then still in the settings go to the AI Features tab and switch Duck.ai OFF > Set search assist to Never > and make sure to click Save and Exit

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Email providers:

Protonmail

Tutamail (do not send a lot of emails at once, they'll delete your whole account in a jiff because it'll be detected as spam)

Startmail (paid)

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Browsers: for the love of god don't use chromium based browsers pls

Firefox

Librewolf

Waterfox

Tor

Firefox is no stranger to dumbass decisions, it mostly extends to being horrible at talking to its users, but they are experimenting with AI chatbots because that's the current hot and cool investor buzzword, like a clicker for your way too rich sub, but they still haven't implemented the killswitch that they said would come asap, so to disable this go to a new tab and type about:config then accept the risks and continue, then set all of these to false one by one (but at this point I suggest going with a fork like Librewolf or Waterfox and doing the steps over there)

With Firefox 148 they have introduced a kill switch at last, meaning a few clicks will disable all AI features, to do this go to settings then click on AI controls and then flip on the switch that says Block AI enhancements. I'll still leave this list down below just in case some other firefox based browsers don't have a kill switch or mozilla tries to sneak something out of it

browser.ml.enable

browser.ml.chat.enabled

browser.ml.chat.sidebar

browser.ml.chat.menu

browser.ml.chat.page

browser.ml.chat.shortcuts

browser.ml.chat.page.footerBadge

browser.ml.chat.page.menuBadge

extensions.ml.enabled

browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled

browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled

browser.tabs.groups.smart.userEnabled

sidebar.revamp

pdfjs.enableAltTextModelDownload

pdfjs.enableGuessAltText

browser.ml.pageAssist.enabled

browser.ml.modelHubRootUrl (set this one to "" so that it'll say blank)

Even if they might not popup for you, make sure to disable these since they'll still suck your CPU's power for nothing like it's opera or chrome all over again, other browsers are implementing this but at least Firefox lets you disable it manually

Then make sure to go onto the settings by typing about:preferences in a new tab (or clicking the hamburger menu on the upper right and clicking settings), and customize everything to your liking like the privacy settings for security, but make sure to type sponsors in the search tab and disable the sponsor shortcuts since they will add ads onto your pinned tabs

Make sure to right click just below the new tab (near the search bar) and select Customize Toolbar so you can mix it up to your liking, then check for themes by going to about:addons and clicking on Themes or you can check them out in the addon site, you can also access the addons section via the settings by clicking onto Extensions & Themes

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Addons:

Ublock Origin

essential to navigate the web nowadays bc of all the ads and bloat, I've put my list of filters in the drive link, go to options > my filters and then click on import, it's mostly stuff to disable/hide AI bullshit and adblocking in general, but check for yourself the grey text after the exclamation point if there's something you'd want to tweak in the filters

Behind The Overlay

removes popups that block the screen in certain sites, like login screens on articles and such

BlockTube

blocks videos and channels from popping up on youtube, go to option and import the file I've added to the drive. Again check for yourself via the Channel ID tab if there's channels you do care about, but it's mostly blocking AI channels

ClearURLs

Removes trackings for sites that put trackings in their urls

Dashboard Plus

If you're using tumblr on desktop you'll probably need this, makes the site less cluster fucky

Decentraleyes

Disables trackings + ads blocker

Don't track me Google

Removes trackers from google search links

Facebook Container

Isolates your facebook identity so that they have a harder time tracking you via third party cookies

I don't care about cookies

Removes cookies warnings so you don't have to click throught 4 screens to just tell them to fuck off

I still don't care about cookies

community version of the previous addon

Indie Wiki Buddy

Redirects you to independent wikis instead of dogshit fandom wikia bloated messes, if there isn't an independent wiki then it will let you see the wiki via BreezeWiki to remove the clutter on the wiki page

Reddit Untranslate

I have a filter for this in the ublock list but the posts still get translated when looking them up on a search engine, so this addon fixes that

Return Youtube Dislike

Hey remember when youtube removed the ability to view the number of dislikes to make whiny ass multimillion companies happy by hiding the reception to their vids/if they did disable dislikes? Let's revert that pretty pls

Right-Click Borescope

Some sites won't let you open images onto other tabs, this addon helps you do that

Save webP as PNG or JPEG

Will help you convert files onto more common formats, like say from webP onto png, jpeg or gifs

SponsorBlock

Community effort ran addon, like as in the users indicate sponsor segments and based on your options you can skip them or skip intermissions and such

SteamDB

Steam is regionlocking review scores, technically you could disable this feature by going to your language preferences, but it doesn't work for me, I contacted steam support and they said they'll look into it (they won't) and to post this issue on the discussion thread, which just got dogpiled with people blaming chinese users for reviewbombs, whatev... it should be obvious how much this hurts everyone, especially indie devs, so If you got this bug too then I suggest you use SteamDB so you can hover over the % of review score to see the actual numbers. SteamDB is a good site in general but I'm reccomending the addon just for this problem specifically

FireShot

Lets you take long page scrolling screenshots, like if you want to screenshot the full "do you love the color of the sky" post you could do that

TTV PRO LOL

Removes ads from twitch when possible, it usually just puts a screen that covers them, still better than seeing ads

TubeMod

Helps you customize the YouTube interface

TWP - Translate Web Pages

Handy translator, I often use it by highlighting a portion of text, right clicking and translating

uBlacklist

Blocks websites from popping up, you can press a button to make them show up again just in case you need it, TO MAKE IT WORK ON IMAGE SEARCH YOU MUST GO TO OPTIONS > SERPINFO > ADD AND ADD YOUR SEARCH ENGINE. In the drive I've added the list of sites I've blocked (around 2500 and most are AI sites), just go to options > import and import the txt as usual

Video DownloadHelper

It'll let you download videos from most sites if they don't let you right click and save them to your pc, for youtube it gives a bigass watermark so not worth using it there

Wayback Machine

Useful for looking at previous archived version of some sites, and to archive sites yourself

Wikipedia Vector Skin

Wikipedia changed its interfacein 2025, it kinda sucks imo, with this you can revert it to how it was before

YouTube Anti Translate

Youtube automatically translates text in other languages, it suuuuuuucks!!! this reverts the texts to their original languages, also disables the dogshit autodubbing

YouTube NonStop

Disables the "Are you still watching?" popup, useful with playlists for music ig

Youtube-shorts block

Disables the sin that is shorts so that you may watch the video you wanted like it's a normal video

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Discord:

The current state of discord ui is horrible imo, consider (AFTER LOOKING AT THE RISKS) using vencord and aliucord with its load of great user-made plugins and themes full of quality of life and features that discord should have by default, the ones I reccomend for vencord are:

oldstyle theme

better upload button

favorite gif search

fake nitro

bigger stream preview

clearurls

always expand roles

account panel server profile

better gif alt text

fix spotify embeds

fix images quality

fix youtube embeds

ilovespam

implicit relationships

image zoom

message logger

no reply mention

no typing animation

petpet

no unblock to jump

preview message

replace google search

relationship notifier

serverinfo

unlocked avatar zoom

spotify crack

usermessagespronouns

validreply

vcnarrator

validuser

viewicons

voicechatdoubleclick

voice messages

voicedownload

who reacted

and for aliucord I reccomend these:

who reacted

viewprofileimages

userdetails

timezones

square avatars

splitmessages

pronoundb

mediapickerpatchers

custom timestamps

copyfilelink

calltime

betterstatusindicator

audioplayer

attachmentpickersizes

also in vencord go to options > themes > edit quickcss and add this line

@import url("https://croissantdunord.github.io/discord-adblock/adblock.css");

it should block nitro ads and popups

and add this one too

nav[class*=privateChannels] :is(

    a[href="/quest-home"],

    a[href="/shop"],

    a[href="/store"]

) {

    display: none;

}

if you want to get rid of the Quest tab, since they are just glorified ads, not worth paying for or sitting though daily ads like they are gacha weeklies

Vencord will stop functioning once in a while so if you boot discord up and see the horrible popups and store tab, and nitro and all that bloat, head back to the site, click download vencord, choose your option based on your operating system, in my case it's Windows so I click on Download VencordInstaller.exe, open it up and click on Reinstall/Repair, open discord again and it should work as intended

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Extra

Instead of google's authenticator with the icon that looks like a butthole, use Ente Auth

Try magic earth and openstreetmaps instead of google maps

If you're on android consider changing your operating system to grapheneos

The context menu for windows 11 has been compressed and it sucks to have less options, or having to expanding it each time, to restore the legacy right click menu open the terminal and type reg.exe add "HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32" /f /ve

The file explorer kinda sucks too, way too little options and basic features are hidden behind three layers of submenus, to restore the legacy file explorer go to this guide and head to option three, download the regedit file and run it, then you can delete the file

Both of these legacy restorations will need you to restart your computer or the explorer process to see the results, to restart the explorer process press ctrl + shift + esc, or just right click on the task bar and open the task manager, then type "explorer" in the search tab on top and click on the process called "Windows Explorer" with a folder icon representing it, right click and click on restart, after some seconds it should be done and you can check if the legacy right click menu and/or file explorer have been restored