Word.ws English Dictionary

crapware

crapware noun: software that is useless or of poor quality.

Noun

crapware (uncountable)

  1. (informal) Software that is useless or of poor quality.
    • Can it download and execute dangerous code, including viruses and really buggy crapware? No problem.1996 September 23, Ross Greenberg, “Java or ActiveX? Maybe both”, in Computerworld, page 98
    • MS [Microsoft] “crapware,” as some call it, is widely disparaged as inelegant and buggy.1998 January 26, David Shenk, “Slamming gates: Is Microsoft-bashing good for you?”, in The New Republic, volume 218, page 21
  2. (informal) Unwanted software that comes pre-installed with personal computers or mobile devices.
    • We suspect that its extra pound of heft is made up entirely of crapware—the Vaio ships with a ludicrous number of useless preinstalled applications. We understand the economic necessities of subsidizing inexpensive PCs with third-party crapware, but there's no excuse for whoring out a notebook of...2008, "Can Apple's Best Topple the PC Competition?", Maximum PC, Future US, Inc. (ISSN 1522-4279), No. 96, page 26
    • Big-name system vendors typically install software on their consumer PCs at the factory. These "extras" go by many names: bundleware, begware, bloatware, and my favorite, crapware. That's because a lot of it is just that: useless crap. […] A few vendors, like Sony and Dell, offer some options to...2009, Eric Griffith, "Make the Most of Your New PC", PC Mag, Ziff Davis Inc. (ISSN 0888-8507), Volume 28, No. 1, page 68
    Synonyms:
    bloatware, foistware

Examples of crapware in a sentence

  • Malware distributors will often use them to try to con you into downloading their crapware.2007, Larry Stevenson, Nancy Altholtz, Rootkits for Dummies, →ISBN, page 65:
  • We suspect that its extra pound of heft is made up entirely of crapware—the Vaio ships with a ludicrous number of useless preinstalled applications.2008, "Can Apple's Best Topple the PC Competition?", Maximum PC, Future US, Inc. (ISSN 1522-4279), No. 96, page 26
  • These "extras" go by many names: bundleware, begware, bloatware, and my favorite, crapware.2009, Eric Griffith, "Make the Most of Your New PC", PC Mag, Ziff Davis Inc. (ISSN 0888-8507), Volume 28, No. 1, page 68
  • All crapware programs can be useful—but each program is likely to be useful to only a few of the people the PC manufacturer inflicts it on.2011, Guy Hart-Davis, The Healthy PC: Preventive Care, Home Remedies, and Green Computing, 2nd Edition, McGraw Hill Professional, →ISBN:

Synonyms of crapware

Origin of crapware

From crap + -ware.

Questions about crapware

What does crapware mean?
Crapware means software that is useless or of poor quality.
How do you use crapware in a sentence?
Malware distributors will often use them to try to con you into downloading their crapware.
What part of speech is crapware?
Crapware is a noun.

Words near crapware in the dictionary

  1. crapulentall
  2. crapulosity
  3. crapulous
  4. crapulously
  5. crapulousness
  6. crapware
  7. crapy
  8. craquelin
  9. craquelins
  10. craquelure
  11. craquelured

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: crapware (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-crapware.wav.

Cite this entry: “crapware.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/crapware. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.