What Is Bloatware on a Computer?
What Is Bloatware App?
Bloatware on PC refers to programs whose successive versions become significantly slower; use more disk space, memory, and processing power; or have higher hardware requirements than the previous versions. Yet, the successive versions only make little progress or suffering from feature creep.
How to Know What is Bloatware?
How to tell what is bloatware? Besides the symptoms mentioned above, there are some other ways you can rely on to identify bloatware.
Bloatware is usually used as a derogatory term by end-users to refer to undesired user interface changes even if those changes have little or even no effect on hardware requirements. It appears in long-lived programs when they start serving a large, diverse marketplace with many differing requirements.
A lot of end users will find they only need some of all the available features. Therefore, they will regard the other functions as unnecessary bloat, even if other end users with different requirements need those features.
What is Bloatware on Windows 10/11?
Bloatware is also adopted to mean unwanted pre-installed programs or bundled tools.
About Software Bloat
Software bloat is a process that bloatware appears. Measurable (actual) bloat can occur due to de-emphasizing algorithmic efficiency in favor of other concerns such as developer productivity, or possibly via the introduction of new layers of abstraction like a virtual machine or other scripting engines for convenience when developer constraints are reduced.
In the case of practicing development within virtual machines, the perception of improved developer productivity comes from the developers no longer taking resource constraints and usage into consideration during design and development, which enables the product to be completed faster but results in increases in end-users’ hardware requirements for compensation.
![[Solved] How to Remove Windows 10 Bloatware from Your PC?](https://images.minitool.com/minitool.com/images/uploads/2020/03/remove-windows-10-bloatware-thumbnail.jpg)
What Is Bloatware on a Phone?
What is Bloatware on Android or iOS?
Similar to what is bloatware on laptops or desktops, bloatware on a smartphone refers to the software that becomes bloated through inefficiency or increase of functions as outlined above. Also, it represents programs preinstalled on a device usually by the manufacture and unwanted by the users.
Bloatware on a cell phone may also refer to the accumulation of unwanted and unused software elements that remain on the machine after partial or incomplete uninstallation. Those elements may include whole programs, libraries, associated configuration info, or other data.
Mobile phone performance may decrease due to such leftovers. Unwanted programs or program components occupy memory and storage space so as to slow down processing speed. To be worst, these leavings may interfere with the correct operations of wanted programs.
What Bloatware Is Safe to Remove?
Bloatware on a phone can be easily removed if the user has root access on his mobile phone, though the rooting process has both benefits and bad effects, such as certain program refuses to run on rooted devices and voiding the manufacturer’s warranty.
Protect Your Computer from Bloatware
There are several ways to protect your PC from bloatware.
Replace Bloatware with Add-ons/Plug-ins/Extensions
This method is mainly available for software developers. If they design to create a program that serves a large community with diverse needs, instead of developing bloatware, they can make use of software add-ons, plug-ins, or extensions to reduce the size of the main program.
Besides the main program, if a user needs extra features, he can choose to download the corresponding plug-in, add-on, or extension, thus avoiding installing all the features related to the program with many of them he doesn’t want.
Prevent Bloatware from Harming Your Device by Antivirus
Though most bloatware is safe and secure, it is also possible that your machine has been attacked by bloatware. Therefore, it is recommended that you rely on some reliable antivirus programs to monitor your computer and remove threats that attempt to destroy your data, even if the threat is the bloatware you installed by yourself and know its existence.
Back up Crucial Data with Professional Tool
If none of the above methods is easy for you, at least, you can make a backup of your important files/folders on the computer before you lost them forever due to bloatware attacks. Here, a professional and reliable backup application is recommended like MiniTool ShadowMaker.
MiniTool ShadowMaker TrialClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
With such a wonderful app, you can back up anything you want, no matter it is a file, folder, system, or partition, volume, hard disk. You can quickly create a copy of it and save the copy in another safer place. Once an accident happens, you are able to restore those items as soon as possible!
About The Author
Position: Columnist
Helen Graduated from university in 2014 and started working as a tech editor in the same year. Her articles focus on video creation, editing, and conversion. She also has a good knowledge of disk management and data backup & recovery. Through an in-depth exploration of computer technology, Helen has successfully helped thousands of users solve their annoying problems.