Debloat non-rooted Android devices

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 that without missing something.

This project is unmaintained since a year. For an up-to-date and maintained fork see <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Universal-Debloater-Alliance&#x2F;universal-android-debloater-next-generation">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Universal-Debloater-Alliance&#x2F;universal-an...</a>

Related Android equivalent commands used in this project:<p><pre><code> `dpkg --get-selections`: `adb shell pm list packages | sort` `dpkg -r &lt;pkg&gt;`: `adb shell pm uninstall -k --user 0 &lt;pkg&gt;` </code></pre> edit: to hide status bar icons(may be version dependent):<p><pre><code> 1) `adb shell dumpsys activity service SystemUIService` 2) search for &quot;icon slots: &quot; and note down names 3) `adb shell settings put secure icon_blacklist battery,wifi,clock, ...` (blacklist is overwritten by new list upon running this command)</code></pre>

Kind of related, a few weeks ago I&#x27;ve been thinking to myself what happened to the open source free software operating system developments for mobile devices? Specifically, how are operating system environments such as GrapheneOS and CalyxOS, etctera, only able to be used on a single company&#x27;s (Alphabet Inc) manufactured phone devices and not any other devices and where are the operating systems that work on as many to practically all of the devices that exist and the general idea of linux-style developments that represent collectively compiling all the hardware variations to have drivers and support for practically everything for everyone to get mostly the same experience regardless of which hardware they use<p>Is the mobile computer hardware industry that hostagedly cowardly locked down that this is no longer possible as it used to be, where people don&#x27;t even own their own computer devices and instead have to use devices that are owned by other entities? Or what other explanation is there for no such multi-device operating systems? Or did I just miss something that I am blind to?

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.<p>Managed to fix it, but learned to be careful - what might be critical for one model might be bloat for another.

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 &quot;uninstalling&quot; them from the user profiles (and deleting cache&#x2F;data, which you can also do in the settings), but it&#x27;s not clear to me what that means.

Similar GUI tool for debloating and customizing non-rooted Amazon Fire tablets via ADB:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xdaforums.com&#x2F;t&#x2F;windows-linux-tool-fire-toolbox-v33-1.3889604&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xdaforums.com&#x2F;t&#x2F;windows-linux-tool-fire-toolbox-v33-...</a>

Why is it not possible to compile and install a complete clean Android directly from the sources on your phone? What are the things that prevent that?

+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&#x27;&#x27; 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&#x27;t run Google services anymore, but does run Whatsapp for the 7-8 contacts I couldn&#x27;t convince to use email, and download from F-Droid, which is enough for me.

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&#x2F;uninstalled? I&#x27;m especially interested in possible dependencies between such packages, when uninstalling one seemingly unrelated package might break something else.

Would be more willing to be a guinea pig if there is more info on what will be removed. There are bloats in my Samsung phone but there are also useful features unique to it that I wanna keep (eg DEX), or things that if removed may break the phone in some nuanced ways.

Thanks for this! I was able to uninstall Horizon Feed and Social from my Quest 3 using this tool!

Thanks, but I&#x27;m still sticking with CalyxOS.

Why write this in rust to execute shell commands?

I guess, the ultimate solution is to ditch Android and just use a proper Linux on the phone, once some more devices are properly supported: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.postmarketos.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Devices" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.postmarketos.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Devices</a>

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

&gt; you CANNOT brick your device with this software!<p>Disable Knox on a Samsung device and it will brick itself. Luckily when this happened to me I was still connected over ADB, able to re-enable it and the device unbricked

If, according to this thread, Samsung is so bad and I don&#x27;t t want buy a Chinese phone... What are my options for an Android phone?<p>Is there any Android phone brand&#x2F;model that is not exploiting its users?

It will either make your phone unstable or do nothing significant.

I think there is room in the Android ecosystem for a producer to make and sell bloatware less phones, a bit like Apple does, and at steep markup too !

Just disable the apps, no need to debloat.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;discuss.privacyguides.net&#x2F;t&#x2F;universal-android-debloater&#x2F;13791&#x2F;4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;discuss.privacyguides.net&#x2F;t&#x2F;universal-android-debloa...</a>

+1, I&#x27;ve used UAD with great success on a OnePlus.