I've been trying to find a way to remove unwanted AppX packages from our Windows 10 devices. This has become a problem after our Branch upgrade to 1709. Until now, we just removed the unwanted packages during imaging.
IEM doesn't really inventory AppX packages, so I've been looking for a good way to find and remove the unwanted apps.
Side note, I've put in a feature request to inventory AppX packages. Please vote on it
Originally I tried to have a query find the packages but the only way was to comb through the Package Path data. These queries ended up being so time consuming that they just didn't work when using them with a task. The next idea I've had is to write a custom patch to detect and remove. So far, it looks like it's working very well. I have one master patch with one Rule per AppX package. I've exported it and hopefully I can attach it to this post.
The only thing I'm not sure about is the detection logic that checks to see if the patch has been installed. Since my logic for detecting if the patch is needed is a custom script, I don't really know how to do this. The only options are reg or file detection. Neither of these will work. The patch does work, but I want to make sure that not having the patch installation detection logic won't bite me later.
Also, I hope others will find this useful. As a work-around, we're blocking the apps with AppLocker in Group Policy. However, we'd still like these apps removed.