Android, DISABLE or uninstall more bloat on non-rooted devices (here an S8)

58 thoughts on “Android, DISABLE or uninstall more bloat on non-rooted devices (here an S8)”

1. Faecesbook is still preinstalled on Samsung phones? o.O I guess Zuckerberg must pay them well. It’s good there’s a way around this. I wonder if these applications would come back after updates. I’d like to completely get rid of stuff like Google Search, and really almost every Google application, including more useful stuff like Maps. No reason to have them as system applications when I can always install them from Store and they anyway get updates frequently rendering the system apk file to be useless.

   Also these newer Android phones have two partition sets named “A” and “B”. I wonder how this removal is being handled. I think they have the system apks multiplied as well, I’ve seen when flashing my phone from PC it sends every package twice for both partition sets.

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   1. I assume he is… And not even easy to remove…

      The

      “shell pm uninstall …”
      is not removing the apk, nor is it eliminating the package. You can still see it with a

      “shell pm list packages -u”
      BUT it is treated as unavailable, that its it is marked as “uninstalled” (as shown in the screen dump)
      After the forced uninstall, an app like Faecesbook nether appears In the “Installed” nor the “Library” tab in the Android Market.
      I have not (yet) been curious enough to see what happens if I try to re-install a forced uninstalled app through Android Market…

      I fear/expect it will come back if/when my S8 gets an Android update Oreo -> Pie, but I do not expect to get it back at the next security update (October) – but will of course keep an eye out for it!

      I have Disabled Google Maps (I use Navmii), but hesitate to uninstall, if I should regret, as I do not know a simple reinstall procedure… (other than factory reset)

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      1. Ah, now I understand. It also means both partition sets should be fine since it’s more of a flag for the OS to not interact with those APKs.

         I think in this situation an OS upgrade, say from v8 to v9 should not bring them back. Should just respect that flag to not interact with “com.facebook.katana” apk. For me from Android 8 to 8.1 it kept all my settings, and it was the entire OS reflashed, 1.2GB or so. Time will tell exactly, I guess.

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         1. Yeah sounds reasonable, but I would not be surprised if Samsung used the opportunity to ‘reenable’ their bloat that they do not allow people to get rid of cleanly (by uninstall or disable)…

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         2. See the bottom “add” in the above, I forcibly uninstalled and unsuccessfully tried to reinstall an app present in the Market (the Samsung Gallery),

            Expect the Google Map to react the same way..

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            1. I tried this too. There is only one application which Xiaomi added to this phone called Feedback or com.miui.bugreport.

               ADB shell pm uninstall -k –user 0 com.miui.bugreport
               Success. Yaay!

               I then tried to install them back just to check:
               ADB shell pm install -r –user 0 -i com.miui.bugreport /system/app/BugReport/BugReport.apk
ADB shell pm install -r –user 0 /system/app/BugReport/BugReport.apk
               Both these commands fail telling me the -u argument does not exist. I guess it took it from -user.

               ADB shell pm install -r -i com.miui.bugreport /system/app/BugReport/BugReport.apk
ADB shell pm install -r /system/app/BugReport/BugReport.apk
               Success. Kind of?

               What they did was to just install the apk again as an update, without actually enabling it. It was still telling me the application is not available for this user in Settings, but now I had three dots in the upper right corner because those applications were considered “updated”. I clicked on those three dots then uninstalled the “update”. Restarts also did not bring them back in any situation.

               I also found something called “Spock” “com.miui.spock” which apparently is supposed to be used for debugging applications and telemetry purposes. I’m not a developer so I have no use for it, also disabled.

               Note: pasting these commands in CMD failed. Apparently it was pasting something along the lines “ADB shell pm uninstall -k 45 0” I don’t know where it was getting that “45”, so what I’ve done was enter “adb shell” then manually type all that “pm uninstall..” or “pm install..”.

            2. You need TWO minuses on the “–user 0” and what you got now is that it is installed for another user. 🙂

               But very interesting that you ARE allowed to (re)install it, so not completely irreversible. 🙂

            3. WordPress thinks that two typed minuses in visual (not just in text) shall be replaced with a longer dash…. That is what made your cut&paste fail I guess. I have added pre tags in the body above, so now it should be better….

               … And “telemetry purposes” sounds like: We are stealing your usage data and sending them home. …

            4. Ah, I see now those first two commands to (re)install them back return:
               java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Unknown option -4
               Still, nothing seems to be changed on the device.

               Ah, of course the main purpose of that application is to send everything back to its mothership >:( Considering how little I was able to find about it online.

            5. I think you have to install/uninstall with matching user, that is if the uninstall had a “–user 0” then the (re)install should too.

               On the error could you post the actual command that gives this? is looks more like a syntax error in the command, than the command failing on execute.

               Are you on Oreo by the way? I am, and Android re-did the “Unknown sources” thing, so that might be the root of the -3001 I get….

               In Oreo “Unknown sources” has been replaced by a Per App system. Intended to use a different store than Googles own (Read: China) see e.g. here

            6. Sure

               adb shell
pm install -r -–user 0 -i com.miui.bugreport /system/app/BugReport/BugReport.apk

               or

               adb shell
pm install -r -–user 0 /system/app/BugReport/BugReport.apk

               Typed one line at a time. Both return the same thing. Also both manually typed since it still pastes “45-user 0” instead of “–user 0”.

               Android 8.1 from 05.09.2018 and I ran everything as administrator from Windows 7.

            7. Wait, no, it worked, wtf o.O

               adb shell
pm install -r -–user 0 -i com.miui.bugreport /system/app/BugReport/BugReport.apk

               Brought back my Feedback application. No restart needed! The command returned Success 🙂

            8. Yup, I brought back Spock as well:
               pm install -r --user 0 -i com.miui.spock /system/app/Spock/Spock.apk
               Using the same adb session.

            9. And here is the CMD output after removing (gain) and reinstalling them back in one session:
               https://i.imgur.com/Q6ps59P.png

            10. Interesting! So must be some Samsung limitation then.

                Did you enable something like “unknown sources” (apart from “USB Debugging” of course) ?

            11. No. Under Settings > Applications > Advanced > Special aplication access > Install unkown applications, even after I check to show system all applications are set to Not allowed apart from my file manager X-plore which I set it to Allowed. (yeah, Google really burried this setting so it’s not easy to find)

                The only “modification”, if you can call it this way, to this device is that I ran “fastboot oem unlock” so I can flash it from PC if/when needed, and now in my developer settings the option “OEM unlocking” is enabled and grayed out with the mention below “Bootloader is already unlocked”.

            12. Just found that the new “Install Unknown Apps” is (also) available from the Security menu, I’m quite certain that I looked for it there without finding it, so maybe it is hidden until you the first time open it the long way round!?! … I would not be surprised…

                And AH! could well be that the unlocked bootloader did something. It ought not to matter that you have given a filemanager the permission. That should not be in play via ADB shell. And it is not that just any app has the permission as I tried to add it to one, with no difference.

                It is also a bit odd that I can not find any description of what

                    Failure [-3001]

                really means

            13. I noticed the edits on the page. I did force close and remove the data on both applications prior to remove them via Settings. I don’t believe this should break the reinstall function this badly though. Although Android kind of expects to have the data removed for every uninstalled application, as far as I can see it never leaves leftovers, save for some empty directories under “Android/data” folder sometimes.

            14. The little I found on 3001 googling indicates that manually clearing the data allows a previous install that failed with 3001 to run. So this i why I think that it MIGHT have worked if I had omitted the -k.switch

            15. I narrowed it down to these:

                Remove:
                adb shell
pm uninstall --user 0 com.miui.bugreport

                Reinstall:
                adb shell
pm install -r --user 0 /system/app/BugReport/BugReport.apk

                Run each line individually. If already in adb shell then omit the first line and just proceed with “pm uninstall..” or “pm install..” to switch between removed and installed state.

                I don’t know what the “-r” parameter does, but without it reinstallation fails.

            16. Yes, that makes sense, also if -k is the issue.with kept data.

                http://adbshell.com/commands/adb-install
                “adb install -r test.apk replace existing application”

                And as the package is there it makes sense that it fails without the -r

            17. This one has a slightly different description https://developer.android.com/studio/command-line/adb
                    -r: Reinstall an existing app, keeping its data.
                So if this is correct the -k switch on the uninstall should not be related to the error i get….

            18. Weird, I don’t understand why it would fail for me without that -r in this case.

            19. I’m blank on the details on what is going on too…

            20. Tried to uninstall some without the -k , still could not (re)install it.

            21. It must be due to the locked bootloader most likely.

            22. Yes most likely it is.

                If would make sense that changing system apps and changing the bootloaders were related.

                Sure Android could have detected that it is actually a reinstall, but most likely no one thought of that as important. And I fear that they would rather see the option of logically ‘uninstalling’ as something they should change to require unlocked bootloader than to allow re-install without.

                So let us hope they do not plug this ‘hole’.

            23. BTW I too originally wrote the post with one common

                ADB shell

                BUT it has the huge disadvantage that you can not cut&paste more than one command at the time (I think it is something with LF/CR/CRLF that confuses the shell) so it might work from some editors/browser but not from others. (Fails copying from FireFox and pasting into a plain CMD)

   2. Note that I have updated the blog/entry, as it is possible to use “disable-user” (one word single dash) AND this is reversible 🙂

      So If/when I do a factory reset again, I will just use that rather than “uninstall”.

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      1. Applications disabled via that command show “disabled” or “not installed for this user”?

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         1. Show where? on the normal apps view the initial ones I uninstalled says “Not installed”. Both the ones I gave disable-user and the ones i have disabled in the UI shows “disabled”. (But only the later ones [ADD:] plus some of the others [/ADD] I can enable from the UI)

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            1. Yes, in settings I was wondering. I was also wondering if you could re-enable them directly in settings but you gave me the answer already 🙂 Well, it’s good it works as expected.

            2. actually I was incorrect on the later, SOME can be (re)enabled from the UI

            3. ….And a bit confusing that there are all kind of combinations between Enabled/disabled , Installed/Not installed and running/stopped.
               I have even seen one that is marked “Not installed”, where I in the UI could press “Force stop”. And the strange thing is that it is an app I have no recollection of having uninstalled….

               The “BBC Agent” aka “KnoxBBCProvider” with package com.samsung.android.bbc.bbcagent (And Im pretty sure that it is not that BBC we are talking about)

            4. Regarding this confusion, some applicstions can have multiple smaller “instances” in which they can be invoked.

               For instance Open Camera has a the main instance, Camera but also can act as a gallery. If I long-press on it I get the option to open its gallery. In Nova Launher I can even create it as a shortcut.

               Some other applications can even spawn two different icons in launcher (rarely, I can’t rememeber which did this).

               And some applications can be tied together, for instance Microsoft’s Excel/Word/PowerPoint – if I disable background data transfer for one, it gets disabled for the other as well. Same with permissions.

               I assume the same could the case if you disable an application which is tied to other applications. Though I don’t think it’s necessary, my “Feedback” application which I disabled was shown in Settings to be tied to 20+ other system applications, including something related to the fingerprint sensor, though nothig else got unistalled other than what I specified.

            5. *LOL* oh what a wonderful mess….

            6. Yeah, I think this is an Android 7+ “feature”. I don’t remember ever seeing this before.

            7. Entanglement at it’s worst…

            8. …and to confuse further packages can also be HIDDEN

               if you execute
               adb shell pm list packages -u

               and compare with
               adb shell pm list packages

               The first will include BOTH those that are uninstalled and those that are hidden.

               The ones in this difference between the two that does NOT appear as “Not installed” in the apps list (incl system) are the hidden ones (Easy, right….)

               On the S8 that is

               package:com.sec.knox.bluetooth
               package:com.samsung.android.bbc.fileprovider
               package:com.sec.enterprise.knox.shareddevice.keyguard

            9. I assume applications which are usually invoked from other places like bluetooth woukd be hidden. Would make little sense to open the bluetooth on its own from launcher. At best you’d get a bluetooth-related settings page.

            10. Bluetooth is not generally hidden. All these three are Knox related.

            11. I’m a bit tired, now I see 🙂
                I ran those two commands, here the only two applications which the -u parameter shows over the one without are the two which I disabled
                com.miui.bugreport
com.miui.spock

2. adb shell cmd package install-existing [package name here]

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   1. Thanks!
      Indeed I am allowed to do e.g.
      adb shell cmd package install-existing com.samsung.android.widgetapp.yahooedge.sport

      Though for some reason It does not seem to reenable it completely. That is, it appears as installed from both the PC and phone side, but there are no icon/widget for it. I tried to restart the phone, that did not do the trick.

      Any good ideas?

      ADD:
      It works fine on gallery
      ADB shell pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.sec.android.gallery3d

      ADB shell cmd package install-existing com.sec.android.gallery3d

      (Uninstalling removes icon, and reinstall restores it)

      Reply

      1. I’m not certain why it doesn’t work on that yahoo app. Maybe it has another dependency? I was able to reinstall Samsung Experience Home (heads up, it’s required on Pie for the new app switcher/multi window) for my user using that command and that is the only app I have tested it on.

         I came across this blog post when I was searching how to re-enable apps on my S8 which I had “disabled” using the same technique you had used. Eventually a commenter on reddit showed me that command. What’s so strange is when I search that command I can’t find any solid documentation on why it seems to work as opposed to other methods you and I have tried. In fact, all I could find were people suggesting the command when posed the question we were both asking. Admittedly I didn’t search for very long, but it is disappointing the lack of easily searchable documentation that ADB and the ADB Shell has.

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         1. Thanks for the details. It is a bit odd that the documentation is quite lacking.
            My worst fear is that as more people learn to kill all the junk, Google will ‘plug’ the hole and disallow it on unrooted devices. It could easily be argued that it is a hole that we are allowed to do stuff this way that would normally require rooting…

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      2. Be aware that this command doesn’t work for Android versions older than Android Oreo (8.0).

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         1. Thanks will add that to the post. But did it not replace an older method?

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            1. This is what I was hoping for but there is unfortunately no equivalent ADB command 🙁

               I guess it’s safer to use pm disable-user $package && am force-stop $package && pm clear $package instead of pm uninstall $package.

               This lets you use pm enable $package in case of problem.

               I developed and try to maintain a universal tool which remove bloatwares on any unrooted Android phones. I’ve just encounter this problem today with an old phone.

               If my project interest someone :

               PS : You should try Commento instead of the slow and privacy-invasing Disqus for your comment section 🙂

            2. I think the disable syntax is different on older androids too, and the options on uninstall might be different too.

               You got yourself a hard job with a generic tool I guess. The documentation I found searching was of very varying quality, and it was not always very clear what version it was intended for. You might consider some feedback mechanism so people can report back to a database, on what has odd side effect if removed, and what is clear cut functionality removed with no side effects. I did quite a bit of Trial&Error. It could help many users if you could colour the apps green/orange/red (Safe / Side effects / Vital)

               Also note the oddity that some apps do not uniinstall/reinstall cleanly, and that sometimes OTA updates re-enables some of the bloat the user had disabled. And packages can get new names on updates (see the Pie-related thread linked)

            3. …And remember it is “disable” not “disable-user” for older Android.

            4. Arg ! Sorry my bad english, I’m not a native speaker and I should have reread myself.

            5. Actually, my post above refers to another comment I made but which seems to be considered as a spam (because I put links in it I guess).

            6. (Yeah I’m a bit lazy, not surveying the comments too often, so selected to have anything with a link, go directly in the ‘pending’ box for moderation)

3. Thank you very much for great and informative post! I removed sticker* packages and my camera was crashing all the time as described. Reinstalling (install-existing) did the trick!

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   1. Thanks for the kind words. Remember that you can disable this junk without any sideeffects 🙂

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      1. In my case it was just about reverting packages:

         ➜ ~ adb shell cmd package install-existing com.samsung.android.provider.stickerprovider
Package com.samsung.android.provider.stickerprovider installed for user: 0
➜ ~ adb shell cmd package install-existing com.samsung.android.stickercenter
Package com.samsung.android.stickercenter installed for user: 0
➜ ~ adb shell cmd package install-existing com.samsung.android.app.camera.sticker.facear.preload
Package com.samsung.android.app.camera.sticker.facear.preload installed for user: 0
➜ ~ adb shell cmd package install-existing com.samsung.android.app.camera.sticker.stamp.preload
Package com.samsung.android.app.camera.sticker.stamp.preload installed for user: 0

         But you’re right, disable seems safer.

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         1. I meant that after re-installing, you can still knock them out with a disable-user with no issues. 😉

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