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Friday, April 29, 2011

Android Crapware, Hidden Browser Settings, and Cellphone Headsets

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Uninstall Android Crapware with a Terminal Emulator

Zan shows us how to uninstall especially troublesome apps in Android:
On a rooted phone, Titanium Backup can usually uninstall a system app without much issue. For those cases where it can't, there's another solution.
Remember, Android is built on a Linux kernel, meaning you can use most Linux commands right in the terminal.
So, first you'll want to find where in the system the system app is located. For my example, I'll use Twitter for Android. On my phone and ROM, it was located in /Data/App.
Fire up your terminal app.
First, enter su to gain superuser permissions.
Then enter cd /data/app or which ever directory the app is located. Enter ls to make sure it's there.
Then you'll enter rm -rf com.twitter.android.apk where com.twitter.android.apk is the apk of your choosing. This is the delete command with the recursive delete (emptying a directory and then deleting the empty directory) flag as well as the force delete flag.
Enter ls again and you should no longer see the apk listed.
Enter reboot and you should see your phone reboot. Once rebooted, the app which you deleted should no longer be there. You may have a garbage icon, but all you have to do is delete it and it shouldn't give you any grief.
Obviously, you want to be super careful running commands like this in the terminal. One typo and you could really mess up your phone. That said, it is a great way to get rid of apps Titanium Backup has trouble with.
Note that an even better way would be to rename the app to something like twitterold.apk, or something like that—it won't show up or be recognized by the system, but you can always bring it back if you have problems. You can also use Root Explorer to do this, if you're uncomfortable with the Terminal.
Lastly, note that doing this will cause you not to receive updates to your phone. Generally, if you're rooted, you don't want updates (because they'd break your root), but again, renaming them and putting them back when you want an update should fix you up fine.

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