current features

.NET Framework 3.5 (includes .NET 2.0 and 3.0): You’ll need this installed to run applications written for these versions of .NET. Windows will automatically install them if an application requires them.

.NET Framework 4.6 Advanced Services: These features are also automatically installed if necessary. They’re only necessary to run applications that require them.

Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services: This provides an LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) server. It runs as a Windows service and provides a directory for authenticating users on a network. It’s a lightweight alternative to a full Active Directory server and will only be useful on certain business networks.

Containers: This includes everything you need to create containers on your Windows 10 machine. They are tools that allow apps to run in their isolated boxes, with no knowledge of anything outside that box.

Documentation: Windows and containers

Data Center Bridging: a series of standards developed by IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) for data centers. They include standards for storage, data networking, inter-process communication, and management traffic that all share the same Ethernet infrastructure.

Device Lockdown: This lets you install and run services and tools that provide a specialized user interface. In common words, it lets you run your Windows 10 device in a kiosk machine, for example.

Guarded Host: allows administrators to run shielded virtual machines on Hyper-V so that they can secure them and block access to the attacks coming from malware or other malicious threats.

Hyper-V: This is Microsoft’s virtualization tool. It includes the underlying platform and services and a graphical Hyper-V Manager tool for creating, managing, and using virtual machines.

Internet Explorer 11: If you don’t need Microsoft’s legacy web browser, you can disable access to Internet Explorer entirely.

Internet Information Services: This provides Microsoft’s IIS web and FTP servers along with tools for managing the servers.

Internet Information Services Hostable Web Core: This allows applications to host a web server using IIS inside their own process. You only need this installed if you need to run an application that requires it.

Legacy Components (DIrectPlay):DirectPlay was part of DirectX, and was used for networking and multiplayer gaming by some games. Windows 10 should automatically install it when you install an old game that requires DIrectPlay.

Media Features (Windows Media Player): You can disable access to Windows Media Player from here, if you have no use for it.

Microsoft Message Queue (MSMO) Server: This old service improves communications on unreliable networks by queuing messages rather than sending them immediately. This is only useful if you have a business application that specifically requires and uses this feature.

Microsoft Print to PDF: Windows 10’s included PDF printer can be disabled from here, if you like (but it’s so useful, we don’t know why you would).

MultiPoint Connector: This allows your computer to be monitored and managed by the MultiPoint Manager and Dashboard applications. It’s only useful on corporate networks, and only if those networks use these management tools.

Print and Document Services: The Internet Printing Client and Windows Fax and Scan features are enabled by default. These enable printing over the network, faxing, and scanning. You can also add support for the LPD and LPR network printing protocols, although these are older and not as common–you’ll only need them if you have to connect to a network printer requiring them. The Scan Management feature here is for managing and monitoring scanners connected to a network.

Remote Differential Compression API Support: This is a synchronization algorithm that allows fast comparisons between synchronized files, which detects the data removed or added from their contents.

Service for NFS: This provides Network File system (NFS) protocol support. If you have and use a NAS (Network Attached Storage), you probably want this feature to be enabled.

Documentation: Services for Network File System Command Reference

Simple TCPIP Services (i.e. echo, daytime etc): This includes a few optional network services. The “echo” service could potentially be useful for network troubleshooting on some business networks, but otherwise these won’t be useful.

SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support: This enables file and printer sharing with older versions of Windows, ranging from Windows NT 4.0 to Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 R2. Linux and Mac operating systems may also use the older SMB protocol for file and printer sharing.

SMB Direct: This supports the use of RDMA network adapters. For workloads such as Hyper-V or Microsoft SQL Server, this enables a remote file server to resemble local storage.

Documentation: SMB Direct

Telnet Client: This provides a telnet command that allows you to remotely connect to the command-line interface on computers and devices running a telnet server. Telnet is old and not secure. You really shouldn’t be using telnet over the network these days, but this could be useful when connecting to an ancient device.

TFTP Client: This provides a tftp command that allows you to transfer files to computers and devices using the Trivial File Transfer Protocol. TFTP is also old and not secure, so you really shouldn’t be using it either. But you may have to use it with some ancient devices.

Virtual Machine Platform: This is a (possibly temporary) repackaging of existing Hyper-V components. It supports Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) 2, which needs to run it's own Linux kernel (as opposed to WSL1, which leverages Windows API)

Availability: Windows 10 October 2018 Update or later

Windows Defender Application Guard: This puts Microsoft Edge or IE in an isolated, virtualized container when you visits an unsafe site. With this enabled, even if a malicious website exploited a flaw in Edge or IE, it couldn’t compromise your PC.

Windows Hypervisor Platform: Windows Hypervisor Platform (WHPX) enables third-party virtualization stacks to utilize the Windows Hypervisor for hardware acceleration. It enables Android emulator, VirtualBox and QEMU (and VMWare in the future) to run in hardware accelerated mode (or run at all), without needing to disable Hyper-V.

Documentation: Windows Hypervisor Platform

Availability: Windows April 2018 Update or later

Windows Identity Foundation 3.5: Older .NET applications may still require this, but .NET 4 includes a new identity framework. You’ll only need to install this if you need to run an older .NET application that needs it.

Windows PowerShell 2.0: PowerShell is a more advanced scripting and command-line environment than the old Command Prompt. It’s enabled by default, but you can disable PowerShell, if you like.

Windows Process Activation Service: This is related to the Internet Information Services web server. You’ll only need it if you run a server application that requires it.

Windows Projected File System: The Windows Projected File System (ProjFS) allows a user-mode application to project hierarchical data into the file system, making it appear as files and directories in the file system. The primary use of ProjFS is Microsoft's "Git Virtual File System", an addon to the Git version management tool aimed at increasing its performance and reducing disk space usage when dealing with massive repositories. It has potential uses in implementing virtual filesystems such as sshfs and ftpfs in the future.

Documentation: Windows Projected File System (ProjFS)

Windows Sandbox: Windows Sandbox is a new lightweight desktop environment tailored for safely running applications in isolation.

Documentation: Windows Sandbox

Availability: Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise Insider build 18305 or later; Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise May 2019 Update or later

Windows Subsystem for Linux: In Windows 10’s Anniversary Update, this service enables you to use the Ubuntu Bash shell and run Linux applications on Windows 10.

Windows TIFF iFilter: This feature enables the Windows indexing service to analyze .TIFF files and perform optical character recognition (OCR). It’s disabled by default as this is a CPU-intensive process. But, if you use a lot of TIFF files–for example, if you regularly scan paper documents to TIFF–this could potentially be a useful feature that allows you to search those scanned documents more easily.

Work Folders Client: This tool allows you to synchronize folders from a corporate network to your computer.

removed features

Embedded Shell Launcher: This feature is required if you want to replace Windows 10’s Explorer.exe shell with a custom shell. Microsoft’s documentation recommends using this feature for setting up a traditional Windows desktop application in kiosk mode.

Isolated User Mode: A new feature in Windows 10, this allows applications to run in a secure, isolated space if they’re programmed to do so. You only need this a program you need to use requests or requires it.

RAS Connection Manager Administration Kit (CMAK): This tool allows you to create custom remote access profiles for VPNs. Unless you know you need this to administer a network, you don’t need it. Remote Differential Compression API Support: This provides a fast algorithm for comparing synchronized files. Like many other features, it’s only useful if an application specifically requires it RIP Listener: This service listens for Routing Information Protocol announcements sent by routers. It’s only useful if you have a router that supports the RIPv1 protocol. This may be useful on a corporate network, but won’t be useful at home.

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP): This is an old protocol for managing routers, switches, and other network devices. It’s only useful if you work in an environment that uses this old protocol.

XPS Services: This enables printing to XPS documents. Microsoft created this document format with Windows Vista and it never took off, so you’re better off printing to PDF instead. Turn off this feature and the XPS printer will vanish from your list of installed printers (though you can also just right-click the XPS Printer in the Devices & Printers window and select “Remove Device”).

XPS Viewer: This application allows you to view XPS documents.

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What Windows 10’s “Optional Features” Do, and How to Turn Them On or Off

What are those Windows features that you can add or remove?