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Comment by oxinabox | Hacker News Reader

I can't tell you how much I dislike the non-removable apps.

It basically killed my first android phone, which was very low end but fine for my needs when I got it. But it came with a ton of non-removable apps which were fine at first, but then they slowly grew to take up more and more of the storage as they updated, til nothing left. I could downgrade them again, I think, but they would soon update again and use up the storage. I guess I could have disabled update, but I wanted that for other things. Ended up jailbreaking my phone so I could remove them. But then other apps like the one for online banking refuse to run because "security reasons"

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Adb allows to uninstall non removable apps also in non rootable devices. It helped me to remove all junk, including most Google crap, from an old tablet making it useable gain.

https://www.xda-developers.com/uninstall-carrier-oem-bloatwa...

Thank you! In my bookmarks

woah

It will still not let you uninstall "system" apps

It's extremely annoying to me that Apple devices don't allow you to delete their apps. I have youtube music on my laptop and every time I search for "Music" in spotlight or Alfred, it picks Apple Music instead of Youtube Music app, so I often have to wait until it starts up to close it.

I want to delete Apple Music, TV, Podcast, etc. I never use them, why do they force me to have them on my device that I paid $3000 for?

I can't speak for Mac, but at least on iPhone, I think all of the default apps can be deleted. At the very least, they hide from search, although I don't know if they are actually gone from storage.

I know for a while i had music deleted, although Siri would complain about needing music to be installed for certain functionality. (i think that has since been changed? all my defaults are installed so idk)

iOS allows hiding/deleting most apps. There are some exceptions (the App Store, Settings, Safari, I think Phone and Messages, probably missing some).

On newer versions of Android you can remove the updates and disable the applications. That will stop them from updating too.

>but then they slowly grew to take up more and more of the storage as they updated, til nothing left. I could downgrade them again, I think, but they would soon update again and use up the storage.

can't you disable updates?

> I guess I could have disabled update, but I wanted that for other things.

One poster mentioned ADB, but another quicker way is to disable the app. It still uses storage, but can't start. If you do this early on, or after downgrading, then the phone can remain like new. Did this a lot on a phone I had 5+ years ago, shame it needs to be done though.

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