Microsoft‘s bad habit of installing software without permission doesn’t change. This has been generating countless complaints and criticisms since the launch of the operating system in 2015, and to this day, it continues to occur. It is true that it does not happen as often anymore, but we still continue to find that, from time to time, the operating system appears with new installed apps of which we have not been warned. And the last one, which has arrived this week, is WebView2 Runtime .
On March 14, a large number of Windows 10 users received, without prior notice, and in the background, a new app on their computers: Microsoft Edge‘s WebView2 Runtime . We can check that the app is installed by searching for it within applications and features from the Settings panel.
As we can see, this component is directly linked to the Microsoft Edge browser, and shares the same version number with it. This means that, surely, from now on it will be updated as the browser is updated.
What is the WebView2 Runtime for
WebView2 Runtime is a new component, controlled by Edge, necessary for many programs to run on Windows 10. Among them, Office 365. This component allows developers to embed and render web content directly within their native applications. For example, they can include JavaScript, HTML, and CSS content and render it without using a web browser.
Last month, Microsoft announced that future versions of Microsoft 365 will begin using this component to load web content directly to them. Thus, all those users who had Microsoft 365 applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneDrive, Outlook, etc.), have been automatically receiving this component on their computers.
Although Microsoft claimed that only Office 365 users would receive this component , there are users with unsubscribed versions of Office, such as Microsoft Office Professional 2019 and Office 2016, who have also received this new app.
Should I uninstall it?
The truth is that it is ugly that Microsoft installs applications and components without warning. I could have waited for the next Windows 10 update , 21H1, which is coming in a few weeks, and included the component in it. But, instead of that, it has preferred to install it secretly, as if it were hiding something. The only place where the installation of this component has been reflected is in the Microsoft event viewer. And, as we can also see, the installer has been run from the Office directory itself.
Now that we have the component installed on the computer, we no longer have to worry . The truth is that it will not affect performance or take up virtually no hard drive space. And, if we delete it, we can have problems when using certain programs on our computer, starting with the Office suite.
Now, if we still want to delete it, we can do it like any other program. We just have to go to the Windows programs and features section, search for “WebView2” and choose the uninstall option. What we do not guarantee is that this component will automatically re-install in the background. And, knowing Microsoft, it almost certainly will.