Asus has a particularly thorny bloatware story because Armoury Crate — the central app on most ROG and TUF gaming laptops — is genuinely useful for some users and genuinely an annoyance for others. Plus there's a long tail of MyAsus, GameFirst, ASUS Health, ASUS Splendid, and a handful of trial antiviruses that ship with most ZenBook / VivoBook / ProArt models.
This guide tells you what to remove, what to keep depending on whether you actually use Asus's RGB and overclocking features, and how to escape Armoury Crate's habit of reinstalling itself.
First: which laptop are we talking about?
What you should keep depends heavily on the model line:
- ROG (Republic of Gamers) — gaming laptops. Armoury Crate manages RGB lighting, fan curves, performance modes, GPU MUX. Keeping it is usually correct.
- TUF Gaming — entry-level gaming. Armoury Crate handles the same stuff but you can often live without it if you don't change RGB or fan profiles.
- ZenBook / VivoBook — ultrabooks. No RGB, no overclocking. Most Asus utilities are optional or actively harmful here.
- ProArt — creator laptops. ProArt Creator Hub does have legitimate use for OLED calibration; everything else is removable.
Use the tables below as a starting point, but apply your own judgement based on whether you actually use the features.
The bloatware list (organized by what to do)
Safe to uninstall on most models
- MyAsus — warranty / support hub. Open it once to register your warranty (or do that on asus.com), then uninstall. Doesn't do anything you can't get from the website.
- ASUS Splendid — colour profile manager for the display. Most laptops also have built-in Windows colour profile management. If you don't use Splendid presets, remove it.
- ASUS Health — battery and CPU temperature reporter. Windows 11's built-in battery reporting is fine. Temperatures are visible via Task Manager.
- ASUS Tutor / GlideX / ScreenXpert / GiftBox — promotional / onboarding apps. Useless after first hour.
- McAfee LiveSafe / Norton 360 trial — bundled antivirus. Windows Defender is now better than both for typical use. Uninstall.
- WPS Office trial — Microsoft Office 365 alternative. Either commit to it or uninstall it.
- Booking.com / Spotify / TikTok promotional shortcuts — Microsoft Store entries. Right-click → Uninstall.
- Asus Hello / Zenbook Folio companion apps — model-specific demos.
Think hard before removing
- Armoury Crate — the big one. On ROG / TUF, this controls RGB, fan curves, performance modes (Silent / Performance / Turbo), and the MUX switch (dGPU vs hybrid). Removing it locks all those at whatever was set when it was uninstalled.
- Want to keep RGB / fan control: keep Armoury Crate.
- Don't care about RGB and want fewer background services: there's a community tool called "Armoury Crate Uninstall Tool" from Asus's own support site that removes it cleanly along with its scheduled tasks. Search Asus support for "Armoury Crate uninstall".
- If you remove Armoury Crate, BIOS-level settings like power profile sometimes need to be set in BIOS instead.
- GameFirst VI — network traffic prioritiser. Genuinely useful if you game on Wi-Fi with other people streaming on the same network. Useless on a wired desktop. Modern Windows QoS does most of what GameFirst does.
- ProArt Creator Hub — only on ProArt models. Includes legitimate features like OLED panel care, tablet input customisation, and colour profile import. Keep on ProArt; you don't have it on other lines anyway.
- ASUS Smart Display Control — only useful if your model has the secondary screen feature. ZenBook Duo owners want it; nobody else has it.
- AURA Sync / AURA Creator — RGB sync across Asus peripherals. Keep if you have an Asus mouse / keyboard / RAM that uses Aura. Otherwise pointless.
Do not touch
- Asus System Control Interface — driver, not bloatware. Without it, Fn-key shortcuts (volume, brightness, refresh rate) stop working.
- Realtek Audio / Audio Console — audio driver.
- Asus Touchpad Handwriting Driver — touchpad driver. Removing breaks Precision Touchpad.
- Intel / AMD chipset drivers — system stability.
- NVIDIA drivers / AMD Adrenalin — graphics. Don't half-uninstall.
The Armoury Crate problem (and how to actually solve it)
This deserves its own section because it's the thing most Asus users get stuck on. Armoury Crate is annoying because:
- It auto-launches on boot even if you don't open it.
- It runs several background services (ROG Live Service, Armoury Crate Service, AsusOptimizationStartUpTask).
- If you uninstall it normally, Windows Update / BIOS detects "missing" and silently reinstalls it via the AsusUpdate utility.
Asus actually publishes their own "Armoury Crate Uninstall Tool" on their support site — search "Armoury Crate Uninstall Tool" on asus.com/support. Run that instead of normal uninstall. It removes Armoury Crate, all its services, scheduled tasks, and disables the auto-reinstall trigger.
If you want to keep Armoury Crate but stop it from auto-launching: open Task Manager → Startup apps → disable Armoury Crate, ROG Live Service. Background fan / RGB profiles you set will persist.
The fastest cleanup: bulk uninstall
For everything that isn't Armoury Crate (which needs the special tool), bulk uninstalling is straightforward:
- Open Settings → Apps → Installed apps. Sort by Publisher.
- Anything from "ASUSTeK Computer Inc." or "ASUS" is the candidate set.
- Uninstall the ones you've decided to remove from the list above.
For 10+ Asus apps, doing this through Settings is tedious — each opens its own wizard. Two faster ways: winget uninstall from PowerShell (works on the apps winget knows about), or the free RBS PC Cleaner Bulk Uninstaller which lets you tick everything at once and runs them in sequence with silent mode auto-detected.
After uninstall — clean up startup and scheduled tasks
Most Asus apps leave Task Scheduler entries behind even after uninstall. Open Task Scheduler (Start → "Task Scheduler") → Task Scheduler Library → look for any task starting with "ASUS" or "AsusOptimization" or "Armoury" → right-click → Disable.
Same for Task Manager → Startup apps → disable any survivors. The free startup manager guide covers all five places Windows hides startup entries because Task Manager's Startup tab only sees three of them.
Model-specific notes
ROG / TUF gaming laptops: If you remove Armoury Crate, the GPU MUX switch (which lets you toggle between hybrid graphics and dedicated GPU mode for max FPS) becomes inaccessible from Windows. You can still toggle it from BIOS but it requires a restart. Keep this in mind before removing.
ZenBook OLED: ASUS Splendid includes the screen-saver / pixel-shift feature that prevents OLED burn-in. If your ZenBook has an OLED panel, either keep Splendid or set up Windows' built-in dark mode + screensaver to compensate.
ProArt: Keep ProArt Creator Hub. Removing breaks the dial control, OLED calibration tools, and tablet input.
VivoBook: Most aggressive bloatware load of any Asus line. Almost everything is removable here. ZenBook is also clean-ish; VivoBook is the worst offender.
Then what?
After Asus bloatware is gone, the next two things worth doing on a new laptop:
- Clean Windows 11 safely — what's safe to delete site-wide, not just Asus-specific.
- Trim the rest of your startup apps — most boot-time slowdown isn't OEM-specific.