UI Modal is a global UI component and it is using on-demand (it means you cannot remove it with XML structs like <remove src="modal.js"/>
or something similar).
It's not only using on the frontend, but it is also using widely in adminhtml as well. For e.g:
src/vendor/magento/module-catalog/view/adminhtml/templates/catalog/category/tree.phtml
It is a part of Magento Minicart (Cart Sidebar)
src/vendor/magento/module-checkout/view/frontend/web/template/sidebar.html
However, if you don't want to use the authentication popup functionality (login popup in Checkout page). You can try to remove that block in XML by using this
<referenceBlock name="authentication-popup" remove="true"/>
Completely removing Magento_Ui/js/modal/modal
is impossible in Magento 2! It will break a lot of functionalities for sure. Of course, in theory, you still can disable the whole functionality of modal
UI with a JS mixin like this:
/**
* StackOverflow No Modal :(
*
* @category Mage
*
* @author Toan Nguyen <https://github.com/nntoan>
*/
define([
'jquery',
'uiRegistry',
'mage/utils/wrapper',
'mage/validation'
], function ($, registry, wrapper) {
'use strict';
return function (modal) {
modal.prototype._create = wrapper.wrap(modal.prototype._create, function (original) {
return null;
});
return modal;
};
});
If I was misunderstanding you, feel free to leave a comment :)