How to Delete Xbox One Games

The hard drives inside of notebooks and desktop PCs are getting larger and larger. We really are past the days where you need to actively manage how much video is on your PC or how much space a program takes up. The good times haven’t necessarily arrived for owners of Microsoft’s Xbox One entertainment console. It’s crucial that you learn how to delete Xbox One games.

The hard drive inside each Xbox One console is large. Storage sizes start at 500GB and can be over 2TB. Still that’s sometimes not enough. The graphic fidelity that players expect of new titles requires that games get even bigger in size. Most Xbox 360 games could fit on a single DVD. The Xbox One has to use Blu-ray because many games require an installation of 25GB or more. For comparison, a single DVD could hold around 4GB of data. That’s a big jump.

Making storage matters worse is the ease at which you can find yourself with a huge game collection. Microsoft’s Xbox Live Gold subscription service gives players free games every month. All games – even those that come on disc – need to be installed on the Xbox One’s hard drive. You can stash some games on an external hard drive, but that won’t completely solve the problem. At some point you’ll need to clear out the old for the new.

Here’s how to delete Xbox One games from your console.

Before You Delete Xbox One Games

Don’t pick up your Xbox One controller just yet. Before you go deleting your Xbox One games, there are some things that you need to consider. Chief among these things to consider is whether you really want to delete an Xbox One game from your console in the first place.

Read: 33 Xbox One Tips for a Better Experience

Consider this, Xbox One games purchased directly through the Xbox Store have to be downloaded again if you ever want to play them. For some games, that download takes a few hours. More complicated titles, like Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Halo 5: Guardians will absolutely take more than a few hours. In fact, they’re so big that they might take a day to download. You don’t want to go deleting a digital Xbox One game today that you’ll find yourself wanting to play sometime in the very near future.

Note that disc-based games don’t have this issue. You’ll still need to re-install them, but it shouldn’t be too much of a hassle.

Also consider the other people in your family. When a game is deleted from an Xbox One, it gets deleted for every user on that console. This means that other people who still enjoy the game you’re thinking about deleting won’t be able to enjoy it either.

Read: Hard Drive Support Arrives in June Xbox One Update

Usually, people delete Xbox One games from their console because they need space for newer things. The hard drive inside the Xbox One can’t be replaced, but that doesn’t mean you have to delete your games. Microsoft allows users to add USB hard drives to the pool of storage the Xbox One uses to store games and apps. Consider purchasing a USB hard drive for offloading new content instead.

How to Delete Xbox One Games

Turn on your Xbox One console by pushing down on the Xbox logo on your controller or running your finger across the Xbox logo on your console. If you have a Kinect sensor setup and Always On Power Mode enabled, say “Xbox, On.”

Select My Games and Apps.

In the games area, navigate to whichever Xbox One game you’d like to delete. Don’t select it with the A button though. Instead, highlight it and press the menu button on your Xbox One controller. It’s to the right of the glowing Xbox One logo on any controller for the system. For this example, we’re removing the Battlefield 1 Open Beta that wrapped up earlier this year.

Now select Manage Game or choose Uninstall.

From within the Manage menu you can do all sorts of things with your game files.

Internal refers to the content that you have stored inside your Xbox One. External refers to the content sitting on any USB hard drives that you have plugged into your device. Select either the Internal or External buttons if you wish to move, copy or delete all files associated with a particular game.

You can select a single item too. Just highlight it with the left joystick and press the menu button. Select Uninstall only if you are sure that you don’t want the game on your console any longer.

Now confirm that you want the game Uninstalled again.

After a few moments the Xbox game you want deleted shouldn’t be installed any longer. Note that if it’s digital, you’ll be able to download it again from the digital collection area in the My Games and Apps menu.

Good luck.