Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Debloat non-rooted Android devices

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 231 posts

Re: Debloat non-rooted Android devices

#41

Post by Unbiased8678 »

squarefoot wrote: post #31

+1. ADB, either directly or indirectly is the only choice to debloat Android devices. This was the case of one of my old tablets (a cheap 10'' Mediacom crap) that resisted every rooting attempt, no matter which tool I could try. Removing unneeded services and stuff became a breeze, although the process is quite dangerous and I ended up with something that can't run Google services anymore, but does run Whatsapp for t…

Yes, I have been using canta with shizuku that enables wireless debugging for this.

https://shizuku.rikka.app/ https://github.com/samolego/Canta

Re: Debloat non-rooted Android devices

#42

Post by prima-facie »

No0op wrote: post #28
captn3m0 wrote: post #21

I tried one of these lists on a (just factory reset) Xiaomi. Ended up breaking on reboot - immediate crash after login, and it was unusable. Managed to fix it, but learned to be careful - what might be critical for one model might be bloat for another.

Could you share logs with uninstalled packages led to this, please?

Probably the Security center or the Mi account app. It will send the phone into a reboot loop.

Here's a writeup about packages which are safe to remove in MIUI: https://wooptoo.com/blog/safe-to-remove-packages-miui/

This is from a few years ago but it should still apply today.

Re: Debloat non-rooted Android devices

#43

Post by thatloststudent »

butz wrote: post #40

Where one can find an up to date list of obscure packages on an Android device with short description what it actually does and the impact if it was disabled/uninstalled? I'm especially interested in possible dependencies between such packages, when uninstalling one seemingly unrelated package might break something else.

This [1] is the list that UAD uses.

[1] - https://github.com/Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-an...

Re: Debloat non-rooted Android devices

#44

Post by Unbiased8678 »

userbinator wrote: post #27

IMHO better to root if you can, since then you do get full control as the rightful owner.

You can't easily root your phone these unless the device is popular and has some community support. Immediately after buying I tried to root my realme gt 2 device and it got bricked. Fortunately it was under warrenty, I went to to customer support and told them it isn't booting up after an update. They fixed it with an internal tool. I haven't tried since.

Re: Debloat non-rooted Android devices

#45

Post by Flex247A »

silversmith wrote: post #37
morsch wrote: post #18

I bought -- full price, retail -- a midrange Samsung phone for a relative recently. The amount of bloatware was incredible. Various social networks and shopping apps were preinstalled. In addition to all the Samsung apps that more or less duplicate the Google stack, poorly. The entire setup process was full of dark patterns designed to extract as much data from you as possible. No way a regular person gets through th…

Could it be that it's a US-specific thing? My last three phones have been EU-sold Samsung S series, and the only things I'd consider "third party bloat" were pre-installed versions of Facebook and MS Office, both easily removable. The Samsung replacement apps is down to personal preference, I find them easier to use than Google "originals". Having casually interacted with phones from other brands, I consider Samsung…

I don't think it's US specific. Have faced a similar situation with the last two budget phones I bought in India.

Re: Debloat non-rooted Android devices

#46

Post by No0op »

prima-facie wrote: post #42
No0op wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you share logs with uninstalled packages led to this, please?

Probably the Security center or the Mi account app. It will send the phone into a reboot loop. Here's a writeup about packages which are safe to remove in MIUI: https://wooptoo.com/blog/safe-to-remove-packages-miui/ This is from a few years ago but it should still apply today.

Thanks. Both com.miui.securitycore and com.xiaomi.account are marked as unsafe for deletion. So it was somewhat expected to break. If we are talking about right packages, of course.

https://github.com/Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-an...

Re: Debloat non-rooted Android devices

#47

Post by Semaphor »

resource_waste wrote: post #25
daniel_reetz wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was furious when I found out that the default keyboard was infested with Grammarly, sending all my keystrokes without consent. Embarrassing for a $1200 flagship device.

This is a user/psychology problem. No one in their right mind is suggesting Samsung. Heck, similar to Apple, you have swaths of people warning you about Samsung. Samsung lives and dies off their huge marketing budget. Buying their phone is more of a psychology thing, than 'I did lots of research and I bought a high quality phone'.

Isn’t it more that Samsung, almost like apple, has great cameras? At least that’s what I often heard, I don’t go near flagship devices and root everything, so no personal experience.

Re: Debloat non-rooted Android devices

#49

Post by oliwarner »

Repulsion9513 wrote: post #7

Why? You can disable apps from right there on the phone, what does this add over doing that? The FAQ makes some mention of further "uninstalling" them from the user profiles (and deleting cache/data, which you can also do in the settings), but it's not clear to me what that means.

It's quicker, can be run pre-setup and as others have said, can remove things that you cannot remove through the standard package interface.
Post reply on HN