Hacker News Reader

Comment by clumsysmurf | Hacker News Reader

Android has a bloat problem in general. I uninstalled almost everything on my new iPad. On my Pixel 6A, I can only disable stock apps (they are still there taking up space). Its 2023, I should be able to completely uninstall apps I don't need.

View on HN

That's likely because Apple is doing the same thing but just lying to you about it. You can't uninstall stock apps because they came on a read-only system image that was signed by your device manufacturer.

This isn’t true. Deleting apps does actually remove that app and usually user data too. Associated system frameworks might stick around because other parts of the OS depend on them.

> This isn’t true. Deleting apps does actually remove that app and usually user data too.

It is true. Factory reset your iOS device and they will come back. That happens because the app is stored still, Apple just creates a second copy that it deletes when you remove the app.

Depends on the app. You can get rid of the real ones like Pages or Sheets or Clips.

Mail or Calculator or Find My is just getting hidden.

You can't uninstall apps contained in the OS image; you're just hiding them. Applies to Android as much as iOS and macOS, too, for that matter.

adb pm uninstall is pretty strong on stock unrooted Android

This functionality can ONLY be accessed via ADB. It is DIFFERENT from "hiding."

You can break lots of stuff, even Google spyware (Play framework), which is the evidence I need that adb pm uninstall actually works to disable prepackaged manufacturer malware!

Don't wait - try it today: https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater

pretty sure that just removes it for current user. the app still sits around on the image bloating things up that way. although it does save a little space.

You can uninstall for all users using the adb helper tool I don't know the command line to do it manually.

Yes it's not removed but at least the guarantee it won't run is quite strong.

True... but in that case isn't it the same thing as using the "uninstall" feature in Android app management settings for bundled apps that just deactivates and removes all updates, basically just keeping the bundled installer?

Afaik on Android you can still uninstall updates so you're left with the OS image app version instead of OS image app + updated app

On the other hand, now you have an old app version lingering

LineageOS (Android build without Google Play) is generally <500MiB. Google apps usually had on something like 500MiB-1.5GiB depending on what you install. Usually OEM devices have at least that much plus whatever their own stuff is piled on

For that kind of futuristic functionality you’ll need to go to the year 2000.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com