Hacker News Reader

Comment by mtgx | Hacker News Reader

What I want to know is why isn't Google allowing users to uninstall some of the apps that come with the devices? You can only disable them.

Surely they can't still use the excuse that deleting those apps will "mess with the OEM's image", now that Project Treble exists, and everything can be put into their own separate modules?

If they do use that excuse, I don't buy it. It's likely an internal decision to cater to their partners who don't want their users to uninstall those apps. But it's really a petty move from the OEMs, too, because if I'm willing to disable that app, then I might as well uninstall it, because clearly I don't intend to ever use it.

View on HN

There are multiple partitions on android.

The system partition is a read only partition that gets updated only in firmware updates.

Apps can also be packaged on that partition.

Since you can't delete files from it, you cmhave the ability to disable a system application.

That deletes the updates (which are on the data partition) then disables the app.

with a rooted phone I was able to delete such a system app using pm uninstall, was this doing a remount,rw on the system partition to remove it under the hood, or how does this work then?

Because I thought that was more of a "you pay us to make your app unremovable preinstalled on all of our phones"-thing rather than anything technical.

It works by actually deleting the data from the system partition, that's not a big deal.

But what happens is that there isn't any way using just the device to reset it back to factory defaults, and that's a problem now. If your average joe can uninstall the play store by accident, they then can't get it reinstalled again without a PC and some technical knowhow.

By making it so you can only "disable" preinstalled apps, you limit the damage that can be done, and because of partitions you don't really harm the user at all (because that space wouldn't be reclaimed if fully deleted anyway).

It's also why most "preinstalled" apps are now just a 4kb placeholder that makes google play go and download the latest version of the app the second it's connected, so if you "disable" it you are only left with a 4kb "skeleton" of an app there.

Yep which makes sense for play store etc., except samsung pre-installs the facebook app in this way. I would be surprised if facebook does pay samsung nothing for this. Similar how google pays mozilla to keep google as the default search engine.

System partition is read only. Updates in modern android are not file based but block based (to allow dm-verity to work, since before and after each update every block's content is guaranteed). If you remount /system as read write even once, updates can no longer apply, since block diffs applied to a filesystem different than expected will almost certainly do bad things.

Any full uninstall of a system app would require remounting /system as rw.

What is your beef with "disabling"? Under the hood it is the same thing as uninstall, minus the file removal or the actual apk. App doesn't run, has no permissions, is never loaded/mapped into RAM.

> Any full uninstall of a system app would require remounting /system as rw.

Why do Google Apps have to be installed to the system partition anyway?

I have tried several email clients and image viewers from Google's app store, — all of them work fine without being system apps.

The system partition is simply the factory image, nothing more nothing less. It doesn't inherently mean privileged, either. There's 2 different app locations in the system partition, 1 for real system apps with system privileges (/system/priv-app) and one for just preinstalled stuff with the same privileges you'd get from installing from the play store (/system/app)

So will they be present after a full device reset. The alternative's to download them after reset. But that would not always work if you were in an area with a bad connection.

> What I want to know is why isn't Google allowing users to uninstall some of the apps that come with the devices? You can only disable them.

Other people already responded and stated the reason, that wasn't directly stated. In addition to those apps being on system read-only partition and not being easy to modify it you should also know that the app doesn't take any extra space from your data partition (obviously, when app is disabled and all its data was cleared)

What is annoying me most are those apps that you can't disable :/ also they could either make it easier to disable or make it diabled by default and on first boot offer user to enable it if they want it, but that won't happen because they want to ham fist those apps to us.

> What I want to know is why isn't Google allowing users to uninstall some of the apps that come with the devices?

Interesting that you are "blaming" Google for this instead of vendors, when (usually) it vendors who make their crap uninstallable. Or do you see lot of uninstallable stuff in AOSP?

A significant number of Google apps are mandatorily non-uninstallable on all Android phones (including Pixels), such as Gmail, Play Books, Play Movies, Play Music, Gmail, Google Maps, formerly G+ and Hangouts. I haven't used Android in a while, but I wouldn't be surprised if Allo and Duo have been added to the list.

Most of the bloatware problem is, in fact, Google's apps. If you have duplicates on your phone, it's because Samsung or whoever else made their own apps, but were forced to ship Google's anyways.

The bloatware is the Samsung apps. If Samsung wants to go that route, they could choose to use the open source version of Android along with their own apps.

What's the difference between Samsung's Email app and Google's GMail app? What makes Samsung's bloatware but Google's not in your mind?

They're both pre-installed apps that some people might or might not need that you can't uninstall.

Samsung's email app is crap and additional to the google app, while gmail feels like a useful default email app.

It's a super fine line that is basically just preference, and they are both bloatware in a technical sense (can't uninstall it).

Those Google apps are part of the default Android experience. And I'd prefer a consistent experience as possible from phone to phone. It should however it possible for the end user to install any other apps of their own preference. I certainly don't want to manufacturers and carriers to force them upon me.

You bought a Samsung phone, why wouldn't you have Samsung apps? Apple phones have Apple apps. Everyone need not have a single company's apps shoved forcibly down their throats.

> Apple phones have Apple apps.

> Everyone need not have a single company's apps shoved forcibly down their throats.

So it looks like Apple is shoving their apps down our throats.

Don't you expect Apple phones to have Apple apps and Samsung phones to have Samsung apps? Why is Google supposed to be the dictator of experience on a Samsung device?

And in a world where 85% of phones run Android, do you consider that an upside? That people only have the choice between Apple or Google experiences, and no others?

Because they created the OS. If Samsung has an issue with it then why don't they leave Android and start using their own OS?

Samsung is certainly within their rights to take the free portion of Android and replace the rest of the missing stuff with they own funky little apps.

> A significant number of Google apps are mandatorily uninstallable on all Android phones (including Pixels),

Point taken and conceded.

Although I'd point out a small subtlety in the matter that they are definitely not mandatorily non-uninstallable on all Android phones, namely those that do not ship Gapps to begin with.

Phones running Android that don't ship with GApps aren't allowed to be called "Android phones". Being able to use the Android trademark requires that you pass Android certification, a part of which requires including the GApps on the handset (and I expect they even require that you make some of them non-uninstallable).

By uninstallable you mean ununinstallable?

I made the same mistake in my reply. :( But my edit button still worked so I just fixed it.

Yes

Reply on news.ycombinator.com