[How-To] Remove System/Stock Apps on Android
Your Android device basically comes packed with quite a good amount of manufacture-installed apps for, say Social Networking. Say you’re not a social networking guy, or you’d just want to save on phone memory space, you cannot remove those apps with regular uninstallers since they are stored in the ‘system’ partition.
To save you from this, there are a couple of apps in the Android Market. And before you proceed with downloading these apps, make sure you have a rooted phone. No root? Skip to the second part of the post.
AntTek App Manager is a one-stop app to backup, freeze, remove cache/data and to remove system/regular apps.
The ‘Apps’ tab lists literally all the apps on your phone, including those responsible for Google Accounts & Synchronization, so you should be a little careful as this might lead to serious issues if you remove such apps.
To remove a System app, select from the list of apps and tap ‘Delete’ in following screen. You can freeze an app as well, which means, the application will not consume RAM/CPU Usage but will remain on the phone memory. To download, search for ‘AntTek App Manager’ in the Android Market. Market Link | AppBrain Page
If you’re looking for a light-weight alternative with no frills, but does the job of uninstalling System/Stock apps, Root Uninstaller could be your choice.
Market Link | AppBrain Page
No root? The ADB way!
If your phone has not been rooted, Android Debug Bridge (ADB) might do some help. Before you proceed, this is for advanced users! A little Unix knowledge is appreciable.
Download the Android SDK & extract it locally. Open command-prompt and point it to the /tools directory. Connect your phone to your computer with USB Debugging enabled on phone (Settings->Applications->Development and check USB Debugging).
Check if your device has been recognized
adb devices |
If your device is listed, browse to system/app. System apps are stored in /system/app.
adb shell
cd system/app
ls |
‘ls’ lists the files in the present directory. Identify the file-name of the app to be removed, and type
rm example.apk |
where example.apk is the name of the file with its extension.
If you prefer to back it up to SD Card, you can move the file instead (which also removes from phone)
mv filename.apk /sdcard/appbackup |
where ‘appbackup‘ is a directory.
Done! Repeat the steps until all the apks that you want removed are done. Optionally, restart your device.
Nice Post! Btw you’re still 19(About Author says so)?
Ah LOL! Thanks for pointing it out Prabhav. The bio was left unedited for years.
can’t delete any app since it gives me a “read only file system” message
any hints?
I tried to use your no-root / adb method. No luck. The mv (move) command fails due to “failed on ‘filename.apk’ – Cross-device link”. So tried cp (copy) instead. cp seems to work, so then I try rm (remove) and get “rm failed for filename.apk, Read-only file system”. Any ideas?
In that case, you’ll need to have Super User rights to remove/move data from the /system directory. Mount the path after obtaining SU access. This article might help you. Thanks.
One more comment. adb.exe is no longer in the /tools directory, at least not in my release. I found it in \Program Files\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools. There was actually a text file in the /tools directory called adb_has_moved.txt with instructions on where to find it.
This seems to have been effective in the new versions of SDK. Thanks for the heads-up.
You don’t have to mount or unmount the phone with a cmd?
It has not been necessary in most cases. But some phones that have a Read-only File System might throw an error while removing/moving, as James & Johny stated. In such cases, mount & remount could be used with SU rights.
Great explanation/ tutorial, it worked perfectly, its easy follow, each step is described.
What is the command to reverse the process if i need to when move the apps back from appbackup ?
From sdcard/appbackup folder, run
mv filename.apk ../../system/appOR simply install the apk in the regular fashion.
hi,
The point i want to clarify here is-
is the process of uninstalling the system app using some applications like “root uninstaller” is same as deleting the .apk file of that corresponding app in /system/apps???
Correct!