Copilot Just Took 3.3 GB of Your Windows 10 Drive Without Asking

An app called Copilot appeared on Windows 10 machines this week, and Windows says it is using 3.36 GB.

Nobody clicked anything to get it.

It arrived through an update, installed itself quietly, and turned up in the app list with a size that made a lot of people look twice.

Here is what it actually is, why it is that big, and how to get rid of it.

What Actually Landed on Your PC

Open Settings, then Apps, then Apps and features, and sort the list by install date. Two entries turn up on affected machines, and they are not the same thing.

The first is Copilot, the consumer AI assistant, and it is the one carrying the enormous size figure. The second is Microsoft 365 Copilot, usually well under 2 MB, which is the small launcher Microsoft has been pushing to Microsoft 365 users since it resumed automatic installs in mid-2026.

The big one shows Modify and Uninstall buttons rather than the three-dot menu a Store app gets. That is a useful tell, and it matters later when you try to reclaim the space.

Why It Is So Big

In April 2026 Microsoft rebuilt the Copilot desktop app. The old version was a small native Windows app that ran on well under 100 MB of memory.

The replacement is a web app with a complete browser engine packed inside it. Rather than borrow the Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime that is already on your machine, the app ships its own copy of the Edge and Chromium components it needs.

Windows Latest measured that embedded browser package at roughly 850 MB when the change first rolled out, with idle memory use around 500 MB and active use climbing towards 1 GB. So a large app was expected. A 3.3 GB one was not.

The likeliest explanation for the gap is ordinary update mess: an old version folder left in place beside the new one, plus cached runtime data that builds up as you use it. Microsoft has not published a figure, so treat that as a reasonable guess rather than a confirmed answer.

How to Remove It on Windows 10

The straightforward route takes about a minute and needs no tools.

1. Press Win + I to open Settings, then choose Apps.
2. On the Apps and features list, set Sort by to Install date so the newest arrivals sit at the top.
3. Click the Copilot entry, then click Uninstall and confirm.
4. Do the same for Microsoft 365 Copilot if it is there - it is a separate app and a separate uninstall.
5. Restart the PC, then check the app list again to confirm both are gone.

If you would rather use a command, open Windows PowerShell as administrator and run winget list to see the exact package IDs on your machine. The Store build usually removes with winget uninstall --id Microsoft.Copilot_8wekyb3d8bbwe.

For the Store-packaged version there is also a PowerShell one-liner: Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers | Where-Object {$_.Name -like '*Microsoft.Copilot*'} | Remove-AppxPackage -AllUsers. Run it from an administrator prompt.

Why the Space May Not Come Back

This is the part that catches people out. Apps installed through the Microsoft Store use a packaging format where removing an app is not the same as deleting it.

Microsoft's own engineering blog spelled this out in 2026: removing a package always unregisters it, but deleting the files underneath is conditional. The app vanishes from your list while the payload can stay on disk.

Desktop-installer entries, the ones with a Modify and Uninstall button, normally do delete their files properly. They still leave scattered caches and registry entries behind.

If your free space barely moved after the uninstall, that is the reason, and it is fixable. Revo Uninstaller Free exists specifically to sweep up the files and registry keys a standard uninstall walks away from.

For the leftover caches, any of the free drive cleaners will do the job.

• BleachBit - open source and the most thorough of the three.
• Wise Disk Cleaner - the gentlest one-click option if you would rather not think about it.
• CCleaner - the name most people already know, and still free.

Microsoft also ships its own free cleanup tool, and it is genuinely decent. Microsoft PC Manager clears junk files, trims startup entries and frees memory, with no paid tier waiting at the end.

How to Stop It Coming Back

Uninstalling solves today. Blocking solves next month, because Windows updates and Store updates are both routes back in.

Start with the Store, since it is the easiest lever and it works on every edition. Open Microsoft Store, go to Settings, and turn off App updates.

Next, the registry key. Open regedit, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsCopilot, creating those keys if they do not exist, then create a DWORD called TurnOffWindowsCopilot and set it to 1.

On Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise and Education, AppLocker is the option Microsoft actually endorses. Add a publisher rule for package name MICROSOFT.COPILOT from Microsoft Corporation, version * and above, and Windows will refuse both to install it and to launch it.

If You Are on Windows 10 Home

Home has no Group Policy editor and no AppLocker, so the clean block is off the table. What is left still works, it just needs revisiting.

Turn off Store app updates, apply the registry key above, and put a note in your calendar to check the app list after each Patch Tuesday. It takes ten seconds and it is the only reliable way to catch a reinstall early.

To make the recheck painless, keep a removal script handy. Win11Debloat is a small PowerShell script that strips preinstalled apps on both Windows 10 and Windows 11, and re-running it is faster than clicking through Settings again.

If you would rather have the tweaks in a window than a terminal, CrapFixer collects a pile of the same Windows cleanup and privacy switches into one small portable toolbox.

If You Actually Wanted an AI Assistant

None of this is an argument against AI tools. It is an argument against software that installs itself and helps itself to your drive.

If you want an assistant on the desktop, install one you chose. The ChatGPT desktop app is the obvious comparison, and it is a fraction of the size.

If you would rather not install anything at all, every one of these assistants runs perfectly well in a browser tab. Mozilla Firefox handles them fine, and there are plenty more in our web browser downloads.

The AI browser experiment has had a rocky year, mind you, as anyone following what happened to ChatGPT Atlas will recognise.

Quick questions

Reclaim the space, then keep it

Uninstall the app first, then run a cleaner over what it left behind - start with the free drive cleaners and see how much comes back, or tell us what you found if Copilot has already turned up on your machine.