What Is Bonjour And How To Uninstall It Completely?

After installing iTunes on your Windows 10 device, you might have noticed that a service called Bonjour runs in the task manager processes. Here I will discuss what is Bonjour and if you can uninstall it completely.

What Is Bonjour?

Bonjour was previously called Apple Rendezvous and is a networking tool that the Apple software use to communicate between them. It is the process installed by Apple software to run various processes normally. It works silently in the background automating various low-level network tasks, and you won’t see an icon for it in Windows.

For example, iTunes uses Bonjour for locating ‘Shared Music Libraries’ which are used for streaming music. Safari uses it to locate devices advertising web pages on your network. Internet Explorer uses this to discover Bonjour’s advertised web pages easily. The Bonjour Printer Setup Wizard uses the Bonjour application to discover and modify advertised network printers.

Do I Need Bonjour On Windows 10?

Bonjour is installed on your device alongside iTunes. It is coupled with the Zero Configuration Networking process and mDNSResponder.exe.

Bonjour is an integral part of iMacs and Macbooks. Some parts of the macOS depend on the Bonjour service for internal networking tasks. Many macOS apps such as iTunes and Safari use this for communicating with other devices on your network. Removing this from your macOS device can cause some serious problems on your device.

So can I remove Bonjour? Any network that runs on Windows PCs and does not have any Apple devices or software does not need it compulsorily. This is because most of the features provided by the Bonjour Windows Service are not used on your device.

Some third-party apps like Adobe Creative Cloud use Bonjour for checking the documentation for special software. Therefore, if you do not need Bonjour services and the features it provides, you can uninstall it from your Windows 10 device.

How To Uninstall Bonjour?

Since the Bonjour service is basically an application that runs in the background, it can be removed from your device similar to any other application. Alternatively if you need to remove bulk softwares from your computer you can easily automate the process by using batch installer and uninstallers.

First, try to uninstall Bonjour from your device using the Control Panel.batch installer and uninstallers

1. Open a Run window by pressing Win + R.
2. Type appwiz.cpl and press Enter to launch the Apps & Features part of the Control Panel application.
3. Locate the Bonjour Windows Service application, and click on Uninstall.

4. Follow the on-screen instructions to uninstall Bonjour.

However, since the app comes bundled with other services, you may need to remove those as well and you may see that the control panel fails to uninstall the Bonjour service. For this case, follow these steps:

1. Log into Windows with your administrative account.
2. Open an elevated Command Prompt. Press Win + R to launch a Run dialog, type cmd, and press Ctrl + Shift + Enter to launch Command Prompt with administrative privileges.
3. Type the following command to uninstall mDNSResponder.exe file:
   “%PROGRAMFILES%\Bonjour\mDNSResponder.exe” –remove
4. Next, you need to unregister the mdnsNSP.dll file as well. Type the following in the same elevated Command Prompt to unregister the .dll file:
   regsvr32 /u “%PROGRAMFILES%\Bonjour\mdnsNSP.dll”
5. Close the interpreter and restart your device.

You should see that you have uninstalled the Bonjour Windows Service.

Conclusion

If you heavily use iTunes to stream music from your phone to your other Apple devices and use your Windows device to monitor that, you might benefit from keeping the Bonjour application on your device. However, if you do not need the service and the features it provides, you can safely uninstall Bonjour from your device.

Since many people have no idea what this service does and do not see an icon for the same, they may categorize this as malicious and wonder questions like ‘What is Bonjour’ and ‘Can I uninstall Bonjour’ etc. Now you know the answer to these questions with the guide above. Tell us in the comments if you removed Bonjour from your device, and share your experience.