How to uninstall Twinkle Tray on Windows

Twinkle Tray keeps only its own settings on this PC: monitor names, brightness hotkeys, time-of-day adjustments and similar choices. Your monitors' brightness itself lives in the monitors. If you set up schedules or hotkeys you want again, note them down or copy %APPDATA%\twinkle-tray first. This guide covers Twinkle Tray installed per-user from the official installer on GitHub, the same file the xanderfrangos.twinkletray winget package uses.

Quit Twinkle Tray first

Twinkle Tray lives in the notification area. Right-click its tray icon and choose Quit, then check Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc) for any Twinkle Tray.exe still listed; it runs several processes. It also starts at sign-in through an entry you can see in Settings › Apps › Startup.

Remove the app with its own uninstaller

Go to Settings › Apps › Installed apps, find Twinkle Tray, and choose Uninstall, or run:

winget uninstall --id xanderfrangos.twinkletray

It is a per-user install, so no administrator approval is needed. In this test the uninstaller also removed the startup entry and the settings folder.

Where the data lives

Location	What it holds	What to do
`%LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\twinkle-tray`	Program files	The uninstaller removes it
`%APPDATA%\twinkle-tray`	Settings and the app's own caches	Back up if you want the same setup; remove for a clean start
`%LOCALAPPDATA%\twinkle-tray-updater`	A downloaded copy of the installer	Safe to remove
Startup entry `Twinkle Tray`	Starts the app at sign-in	Turn it off in Settings › Apps › Startup if it is still there

Check the result

Run these read-only commands after the uninstall finishes:

Get-Process "Twinkle Tray" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
winget list --id xanderfrangos.twinkletray
Test-Path "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\twinkle-tray"
Test-Path "$env:APPDATA\twinkle-tray"
Test-Path "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\twinkle-tray-updater"

No output from Get-Process only means this query observed no matching process; a suppressed error leaves the running state unknown.
A completed winget list query with no match means the app is no longer registered; a matching row means the uninstall did not finish.
The first Test-Path returning False means the program folder is gone.
Test-Path "$env:APPDATA\twinkle-tray" returning True means your settings are still there; remove the folder yourself if you want a clean start.
Test-Path "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\twinkle-tray-updater" returning True means the downloaded installer copy is still there and can go.

If you installed it with winget

winget uninstall runs the same uninstaller Settings › Apps uses and removes the same files.

What Mole lists

For Twinkle Tray installed per-user:

The program folder, the Start Menu and desktop shortcuts, and a row grouping Windows' own records of when you opened the program are selected by default.
%LOCALAPPDATA%\twinkle-tray-updater, which holds only a downloaded installer, is selected by default.
%APPDATA%\twinkle-tray is listed but not selected, since it holds your settings. The caches inside it (Code Cache, GPUCache and the Dawn caches) are listed on their own and selected.
If the Twinkle Tray startup entry still points at the removed program, Mole lists it too, selected, and backs it up to a .reg file before removing it; in this test the uninstaller had already removed it.

What this test covered

Tested on September 28, 2026 with Twinkle Tray 1.17.2 installed per-user from the official installer on an ARM64 test VM. The test PC had no monitor that reports brightness control, so no monitor settings were saved. Every listed row was ticked and removed in this test.