How to Check App Size on Windows 8.1

Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 make it incredibly easy for users to download new apps and games. Thanks to the Windows Store new apps are always just a few taps or clicks away. Unfortunately, if you’re one of the people who like to download as many apps and files as you can, you’ll quickly learn that not managing the amount of space your apps are taking up could leave you in need of more storage.

Here’s how to check the size of Windows Store apps in Windows 8.1 and uninstall them if they are taking up too much space.

Go to the Start Screen by pressing the Windows key on your computer’s keyboard. Touch users scan also press the Windows key just below their device’s display.

Place your mouse cursor in the top-right hand corner of your screen to bring up the Charms Bar. Users of touchscreens should slide their finger from the right edge of their display to the left.

Click or tap on the Change PC settings button in the right-bottom corner of the Settings menu.

Click or tap on Search and Apps in the PC settings menu. It’s the fourth option on the left side of Settings app.

Click or tap App sizes.

At this point you’ll need to wait a bit while the settings app scans your computer’s storage to calculate which apps are taking up the most space on your device. You can do other things on your PC while this scans by returning to the Start Screen and opening another application. The scan takes longer to to run depending on how much storage your PC has.

Now that the scan is finished all of the apps stored on your PC should be represented by an icon in the App sizes screen. Apps taking the most storage appear closer to the top of the menu.

It’s important to remember that unless something particularly strange is going on, app sizes on Windows 8 tend to hover around 100MB to 200MB. You can click or tap on each app to uninstall it from your device if you feel it is taking up too much space.

Uninstalling an app on that particular Windows 8 device won’t get rid of any settings that have been synced to other PCs by default. Choosing to uninstall any version of that app on other computers will also cause you to lose the settings associated with that app.