How to remove a game from CurseForge App

Here's how to remove a game from CurseForge App. This guide is for intermediate users as it will involve using an online editor. It's quite straight-forward though if you follow it carefully.

Preface

CurseForge App is a fantastic little addon manager but it's missing one little feature - the ability to completely remove a game instance from the app. It's something that could get added in future but until then, this guide will show you how to remove a game instance from CurseForge App by editing the game instance file.

If all you want to do is hide the game instance (but keep it in CurseForge App), there is a much easier way. Click the cogwheel in the lower-left corner of the app, click World of Warcraft under Game Specific, click the Game Instance dropdown menu, select the game instance that you want to hide then disable the 'Manage addons for this instance' setting.

However, if you want to remove the game instance entirely from CurseForge App, read on.

Requirements

The game instance file is called AddonGameInstance.json.

If you are using the standalone CurseForge App, AddonGameInstance.json can be found in %appdata%\CurseForge\agent\GameInstances

If you are using the CurseForge/Overwolf bundle, AddonGameInstance.json can be found in %localappdata%\Overwolf\Curse\GameInstances

It is recommended that you make a backup copy of the relevant file before you continue. That way, if you make a mistake editing the file, you can close CurseForge App, restore the backup copy and relaunch CurseForge App to get back to where you were.

AddonGameInstance.json is in JSON format so you will need a JSON editor to edit it. I will use JSON Viewer in this example. It's a free and easy-to-use online JSON editor.

Procedure

Close CurseForge App completely.

Open AddonGameInstance.json in Notepad (see the requirements section above to find it). In Notepad, press CTRL/A to select all the code then press CTRL/C to copy the entire code to the clipboard.

Open JSON Viewer. Click in the left-side panel to give it focus then press CTRL/V to paste the contents of AddonGameInstance.json into the panel. It will take a few seconds to process then you will see the contents of the file in the panels.

Now focus on the right-side panel. Click the View button in the right-panel title bar and click Tree to switch to tree view.

Now you will see an array of game instance nodes. The individual nodes will be numbered. Each numbered node is a game instance.

Start at node 0. Click the expand button (the arrow pointing right) for node 0. You will see some data. Look for a field called installPath to see the path to the game for that node. It will be near the top of that node.

If the data for installPath matches the game instance that you want to remove, proceed to the next step. If not, click the collapse button for node 0 to close it then repeat the same procedure with node 1. Then node 2. Then node 3, etc. Keep looking at the installPath for each node until you find the game instance that you want to remove.

Once you have found the node which contains the game instance that you want to remove, click the actions button (to the left of the numbered node) and click remove. This will remove that node from the array. The remaining nodes in the array will be renumbered so that there are no gaps in the numbering.

Now click the Tree button in the right-panel title bar and click Code to switch to Code view. Click the Copy to clipboard button in the right-panel title bar to copy the code to the clipboard. Switch back to Notepad (which will still be showing your original AddonGameInstance.json file). In Notepad, press CTRL/A to select all of the code, press DELETE to delete the code then press CTRL/V to paste the new code. Click File and Save.

Finally, launch CurseForge App and the game instance should no longer be listed.

Want to rearrange the game instance order?

You can use JSON Viewer to rearrange the order of game instances in the dropdown menu in CurseForge App. Just put the right-panel into Tree view (using the button in the right-panel title bar) then drag the little move buttons (to the left of the actions menu buttons) to move the nodes. Note that the app may reset the game order if you add a new game.