zdnet[.]com/article/why-debloating-windows-is-not-a-good-idea-and-what-to-do-instead/
Everyone's interested in getting Windows to run better, &/or getting as much performance out of their PC/laptop as possible. Some are concerned with tracking / privacy, while others are just annoyed with apps Microsoft or the manufacturer preload. Then there's the issue of disk space -- seems the only one worried 'bout that is you -- certainly Not most devs writing software, or Windows for that matter. And there are loads of apps out there claiming to tackle every one of those concerns. Ed Bott's take is not to bother with any of that software, & he then talks about what you can do in Windows yourself to clean things up a bit. For most folks in ZDNet's targeted audience he's probably not too far off, though I feel he might have added some explanations along the way.
Here's my take, FWIW...
The first step in getting Windows running as well as possible is Task Mgr. Click the column header for CPU on the Processes tab so the top usage is at the top of the list. Then note what's taking up most of the CPUs resources, especially just after you log into Windows. You can usually tell if it's something to do with Windows itself or a 3rd party app that's installed. If it's a 3rd party app that only hogs the CPU when you 1st start Windows, go to the Startup tab in Task Mgr. & at consider turning it off. If it's regularly hogging the CPU OTOH, google & consider uninstalling it -- Lenovo had a bad version of one of it's preloaded apps that was known for this, and an easy replacement was available for example. If it's a service bogging down the CPU, you can go to Control Panel -> Admin Tools [or Windows Tools in Win11] -> Services. If a service is important you can try setting it to manual start, so it only fires up when needed, & if you don't think you need the service, you can disable it to turn it off [and back on if you were wrong].
Then check the Disk & Network columns the same way, clicking the header to sort the column. Your device might be disk-bound -- if it's apparent that you're waiting on the device to read/write to the hard disk, it's likely you need a new, faster SSD. If the network is always busy, but you don't have much in the way of throughput [Mbps], do a network speed test -- the Performance tab will also give you an indication of WiFi signal strength, which could indicate that's a problem. Memory [RAM] is important, but Windows is pretty forgiving in that respect -- I've got Win11 running fine on a tablet with hardly any -- so you probably don't have to worry unless you have an app taking up a constantly increasing amount, which could signal a memory leak.
Windows 10 [& I assume 11] can get tired itself. It does not always age well. You can try a registry cleaner, and you might get lucky -- many folks claim that they have -- and as long as you backup first, there's no harm except your time to try. If you don't mind tedium you can clean the registry manually with better results, for example find a key for an app that's no longer installed, note everything referenced, e.g., CLSID, delete that key, then search the registry using the app's name, then every reference you've noted, noting any references in any keys you find, searching on those, deleting everything you come across. In most cases though, reinstalling Windows will fix things quicker & easier. It'll keep your installed software, and files you've saved, and do some registry cleanup too. After backing up to be safe, download the latest ISO, right-click -> mount it in File Explorer, then run setup.exe on the mounted disc image.
Cleaning out bloat can be harder, whether it's to get rid of a misbehaving app or to free up disk space. Uninstalling some apps in Settings -> Apps, or by just right-clicking the shortcut in the Start Menu is blissfully easy. Note that much of what Windows includes in the Start Menu are just placeholders, taking up hardly any space, as long as you don't click them & install the full app. Other apps can be a bad dream or even a nightmare. Asus has a software suite that leaves loads of leftovers when uninstalled, and those leftovers include drivers with a long history of problems. Autoruns [Sysinternals] can send you to one of the registry keys for a driver, but you have to search for the rest -- deleting those keys turns them off. After a reboot, if everything's fine, you can delete the files, and optionally clean anything related out of the registry.
You can use winget to uninstall apps it knows about, or AppxPackage with Powershell -- these 2 will remove apps that don't give you the option to uninstall. But, it may not do you much good... if you have File Explorer set to show system & hidden files in the Options dialog, the free WizTree will show you the folder size of Windows Store apps stored in the protected C:\ Program Files\ WindowsApps folder. Your Phone is an example of a fairly large app. Using a common AppxPackage command to uninstall it will save you hardly any of that disk space, since most of the files are left behind. You'd have to unprotect the folder, delete [or move] the relevant files/folders, make sure there were no ill effects, & probably should re-protect the WindowsApps folder. Icacls would probably work to backup & reinstate the access restrictions, but on the whole it's likely not worth all that work for the disk space freed.
docs.microsoft[.]com/en-us/windows/package-manager/winget/
neowin[.]net/news/windows-11-default-apps-apparently-take-up-more-than-15gb-of-your-disk-space/
docs.microsoft[.]com/en-us/powershell/module/appx/?view=windowsserver2022-ps
Otherwise, after a Windows or driver update, or to get rid of the dump after a BSOD, you can run Disk Cleanup [right-click the drive in File Explorer -> Properties, or in future Win11, Control Panel -> Windows Tools] & dism /online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup at the Command Prompt running as admin. After a Windows Update you can delete the C:\Windows\ SoftwareDistribution\ Download folder. You can always clean out Windows 2 temp folders, and clear your browser caches. If you add or update AMD drivers, don't forget to delete the C:\AMD folder, & if you use AMD graphics, get rid of the .csv files in C:\ProgramData\ AMD\ PPC\.
When it comes to privacy, my own opinion is that too many people that say they're worried about privacy don't do anything to change their habits online. There are privacy oriented &/or anonymizing apps. Your browser's Privacy mode helps, DuckDuckGo helps more, the portable version of Firefox doesn't save records to your hard disk, the TOR browser is better yet. A VPN hides your IP address. A VirtualBox VM can use a random MAC address & can also be more easily restored to a pristine state than a regular copy of Windows. I don't believe that you can ever get rid of every trace of history from most browsers or Windows registry -- that's not to say privacy cleaners won't help, since the person looking may or may not have the necessary skill set.