Wave Uninstaller
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Removes for real — uninstall, leftover scan, backup, undo

Uninstalling is the easy part.

The hard part is what stays behind: orphaned registry keys, folders left in AppData, startup entries that no longer start anything. Wave runs the program's own uninstaller, finds what it left, and removes it — into a backup, so every step can be undone.

Download for Windows · .zip Installer and checksums Source

Windows 10 (1809+) and 11 · x64 · free and MIT licensed · unsigned · unzip and run, nothing to install

Wave Uninstaller's program list: a table of name, publisher, version, size and install date, with a detail panel for the selected program alongside it.
Rendered from the test fixture, so the entries are invented.

What Wave does

All three work today. The card says how far each one goes.

Finds what is installed

Registry uninstall keys, the MSI database and Store packages, merged into one row per program.

Done

Cleans up afterwards

What the uninstaller left: folders in Program Files, ProgramData and AppData, registry keys, startup entries, shortcuts. Services and scheduled tasks still to come.

Done

Takes it all back

Every removal goes to a backup first, every step is journalled before it runs, and the Backups window puts an operation back.

Done

Why you should trust it

An uninstaller that catches the wrong directory once is unusable.

Deleting means moving

Files move to a backup with their paths intact; registry keys are saved as JSON and as an importable .reg file.

Not the recycle bin — that cannot hold registry keys, and people empty it without thinking.

Testable without Windows

The core never calls a Windows API. It reads through one trait with two implementations: the real one, and one that reads an invented system state from JSON.

So the logic deciding what may be deleted runs against frozen test cases in milliseconds, instead of by hand in a VM.

Never touched: Windows directories, WinSxS, anything owned by TrustedInstaller, shared runtimes, and any path belonging to another installed program. Checked before scoring, not after.

Where it stands

P3 builds the undo that P4 needs, so the order cannot change.

  1. P0

    Inventory

    Read the registry, MSI and Store packages, show them as a sortable list.

    Done
  2. P1

    Uninstalling

    Run the native uninstaller, wait for its whole process tree, remove what it left.

    Done
  3. P2

    The scan

    Files and registry are searched, scored and filtered by a protection list. Services and scheduled tasks still to come.

    Partly
  4. P3

    Undo

    Backup and journal are written before anything moves, and put it all back. Restore points still to come.

    Partly

All six phases