Uninstall

uninstall.exe and its metadata live outside the application folder, so a manual delete of the app directory never orphans the Windows Apps entry.

The location depends on the install scope:

<data-dir>\
    uninstall.exe
    installer_info.json        (the real install_dir, associations, shortcuts, ...)
    installer_manifest.json

The product appears in Settings > Apps > Installed apps (and in classic Add/Remove Programs). Machine-wide installs are listed for every user; per-user installs only for the installing user.

What uninstall does

Uninstalling runs uninstall.exe, which:

1. Reads installer_info.json to find the real install directory.
2. Runs plugin down functions, best-effort and in reverse declaration order. See Plugins.
3. Walks installer_manifest.json and removes every tracked file. If the install was machine-wide and the current user is not elevated, a UAC prompt is shown first and the file operations run in a hidden elevated subprocess.
4. Removes the shortcuts it created, the file associations that still point at our ProgID, and the registry entries it wrote (anti-stomp; empty created keys are pruned).
5. Removes version.json and installer_manifest.json, then the folders the install folder policy allows.
6. Deletes the Uninstall registry entry, in HKCU or HKLM to match the install.
7. Spawns a second-stage copy of itself from %TEMP% that applies the install folder policy once the first stage has exited, deletes the data directory (including uninstall.exe itself), then schedules its own removal at reboot. No cmd.exe, no console flash.

If the app folder was already deleted by hand, the file steps do nothing and the registry entry and data directory are still cleaned.

The install folder

The install folder can hold files the installer never wrote: files the application or the user added, or files that were there before the install. --uninstall-dir-policy (config key uninstall_dir_policy) sets what the uninstaller does with it:

The installer records the folders it creates in installer_info.json (created_dirs): the install folder and any missing parent folder, plus the payload’s sub-folders. An upgrade into the same folder adds its own to the list. Folder removal is never recursive under tracked, so a folder that still holds anything stays in place and is noted in the uninstall log.

Every install, upgrade, reinstall or patch rewrites uninstall.exe and installer_info.json, so the policy of the most recent build applies. A product installed by a build predating the policy is purged, as before. A product first installed by a build predating created_dirs has no record of the folders it created: under tracked, those folders are kept.

purge refuses a recorded path that is a drive root, a profile or system folder, or a parent of one.

Silent uninstall

uninstall.exe --silent

Skips the confirmation dialog. This is what the registry QuietUninstallString invokes.

Completion message

By default, an interactive uninstall ends without a confirmation dialog. To show an “uninstall complete” message box at the end, build the installer with --show-uninstall-complete (config key show_uninstall_complete).

Language

The uninstaller picks its UI language the same way the installer does: --lang <code>, then the INSTALLWAY_LANG environment variable, then the OS locale, with English as the fallback. See Installer runtime flags.