Uninstalling Carrier/OEM Bloatware Without Root Access

[HarborFront]

More and more carriers and OEMs are locking down their devices and installing various pieces of bloatware onto our smartphones and tablets. Admittedly, bloatware is a rather subjective term and can range from Samsung’s own messaging application to Google’s own music player application to even actual spyware like DT Ignite. Because many of our phones and tablets are locked down, it can be difficult to uninstall or even disable some of these pre-installed system applications.

We generally see smartphones and tablets setup this way because the OEM or the carrier wants to maintain control of the devices they sell. Sometimes they get paid for each application they pre-install on the smartphones they sell. Then there are times when they can even make more money from the diagnostic and usage data these applications can collect on your phone. At the end of the day though, carriers and OEMs do this for both additional revenue and control of the platform.

There are some debloater applications in the Play Store for certain OEMs, which is nice, and there are also some dedicated XDA community members here that put together tools which can help get rid of these as well. It’s rare to see a universal solution for this task, though, and today’s guide will walk you through how to manually uninstall these system applications without root access. All you need is a few simple ADB commands in a command prompt.

Read and watch video in the link

 

[Yellowing]

It's just hiding them.

 

[brambedkar59]

Doesn't work on all apps only those that can be uninstalled directly from launcher. Better option would be to disable using the "Play store" method (help & feedback>delete or disable apps on Android>tap to go to application settings>) and call it a day.

 

[Evjl's Rain]

there are much easier ways
1/ use Disable bloatware - hideapps -> quickly disable apps that can be disabled (not the best way but the easiest and safest way)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/...pps&pcampaignid=APPU_1_bKY8W76zMYKbkwW5lp6oBw
2/ use Debloater: the best way and most effective with UI support. Use with care because you can disable important apps -> unstable. Tested, worked perfectly on my sony Z3. All the crappy tmobile apps were gone. Apps are hidden and cannot be executed
V3.90 Debloater(Lets remove all that carrier bloat !! Root not required..)

 

[brambedkar59]

there are much easier ways
1/ use Disable bloatware - hideapps -> quickly disable apps that can be disabled (not the best way but the easiest and safest way)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.inkwired.hideapps&hl=en&referrer=utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_term=disable+bloatware+hideapps&pcampaignid=APPU_1_bKY8W76zMYKbkwW5lp6oBw
2/ use Debloater: the best way and most effective with UI support. Use with care because you can disable important apps -> unstable. Tested, worked perfectly on my sony Z3. All the crappy tmobile apps were gone. Apps are hidden and cannot be executed
V3.90 Debloater(Lets remove all that carrier bloat !! Root not required..)

'Disable Bloatware' doesn't even show all the apps and Debloater shows an error while removing OEM apps. I still haven't found a method/app which can disable/uninstall bloatware which Playstore's help & feedback trick fails to do.

 

[Evjl's Rain]

'Disable Bloatware' doesn't even show all the apps and Debloater shows an error while removing OEM apps. I still haven't found a method/app which can disable/uninstall bloatware which Playstore's help & feedback trick fails to do.

disable bloatware only shows the apps which can be disabled via app manager. It just simplifies it for us. Of course not the best method but the safest
I don't know what error you get for your phone but for my phone, it worked flawlessly. Perhaps, your phone doesn't support it or something was wrong during the process

 

[brambedkar59]

disable bloatware only shows the apps which can be disabled via app manager. It just simplifies it for us. Of course not the best method but the safest
I don't know what error you get for your phone but for my phone, it worked flawlessly. Perhaps, your phone doesn't support it or something was wrong during the process

Yup, it must be the MIUI (Also as my phone will be getting the MIUI, I don't wanna root it like my old one). Is your phone using stock android or some other skinned version?

 

[Evjl's Rain]

Yup, it must be the MIUI (Also as my phone will be getting the MIUI, I don't wanna root it like my old one). Is your phone using stock android or some other skinned version?

sony z3 with stock sony xperia skin. noroot

 

[ttomovcik]

I´m currently working on software to simplify that (it will be on my GitHub page -> "awesomedroid").
But the process is simple. Export package list, and uninstall them.

Steps:

• Enable USB debugging
• Install ADB (15 sec adb installer from xxda will do)
• Run the following commands

• adb shell pm list packages > path/to/save/and/filename.ext

• After that, check the file for package names you want to disable
• And last thing to do:

• adb shell pm disable --user 0 package.name

 

[lowdetection]

Is there a list of common known bloatware from various vendors, that is updated with behavioral analysis of what such apps do?

I suspect would be hard to make such list, do to many ramifications of cheaps smartphones in China that for the most are unknown, but I still hope to see such thing.