You may have noticed that on Windows 10, Skype has a really annoying habit of a) starting up on it’s own and b) starting up randomly at any point it feels like. And if you try to look for settings to change this behaviour, you can’t find anything at all. Well if this sounds familiar, then your version of Skype that is running is the Windows 10 version which is installed via the Microsoft App Store (or as others call it, “built-in apps”) and in this version, it is impossible to shut down and quit Skype, impossible to prevent Skype from starting up automatically, either when Windows starts up or randomly whenever it feels like it.

The below guide with imagery will show how you can uninstall the Windows 10 app version of Skype completely from your system and install the desktop version of Skype which actually allows you to control when to have Skype running.

To verify this is indeed the version you are running, if you click the Windows icon (start button) in your task bar and search for app store, and within the Microsoft app store for Skype, select it and you should see something like the below which indicates that this application is installed.

Note: If this doesn’t indicate that it is installed here, you must already be running the Skype for Desktop version and it should be uninstallable from your Control Panel > Uninstall a Program list.

As you will notice, there is no way to actually uninstall Skype from the app store (in true Microsoft fashion), so you will need to open up the Windows PowerShell with administration rights so click the Windows icon (start button) in your taskbar again, search for Windows PowerShell, right mouse-click it and select ‘Run as administrator’.

When this loads up, you will need to run the following command:

This will then uninstall Skype from the app store, again, you can verify if this has worked by visiting the app store, searching for Skype and the indication that it was installed before should now have disappeared.

Once that version is uninstalled, if you wish to reinstall Skype with actual control over when it is open, running and usable, visit the Skype downloads page and instead of selecting the ‘Get Skype for Windows 10’ option, select the ‘Get Skype for Windows’ option. Instead of redirecting you to the Microsoft App Store, this will initiate a download of the Skype Desktop version.

Install the package that this downloads and upon signing back into your Skype (Microsoft) account, you’ll find that the Skype version you are now running is the traditional desktop version that you should recognise that allows you to ‘Sign Out’ or ‘Quit Skype’ from the icon in the system tray (like the below).

Let us know if you experience any issues at all with this.