Android phones often come with loads of pre-installed apps commonly known as bloatware, from manufacturers and carriers. If not used, these apps clutter your system, or end up draining your battery.
By removing these unwanted apps, you can improve your Android phone’s performance and get some free storage space too.
Bloatware is commercial software that tends to waste your phone’s resources and memory, and most users hardly touch these apps, ending up with slow performing devices.
The best thing is to remove or disable them, rather than leave them on your phone wasting its precious computing power.
Here’s a quick guide that’ll show you to remove bloatware (or crapware) on your Android phone.
Uninstall or Disable Bloatware
There are a few choices you can use to remove crapware from your Android phone’s system.
Uninstalling removes the app entirely from your device, but it has its disadvantages, like instability and other problems like blocking critical updates to your phone.
Once the apps are uninstalled, you might not even be able to restore them, as you never know when you’ll need them in the future.
Google Play Store has many apps, some from manufacturers who are putting their apps in the store, just in case you remove an app and need it back in future. But not all of them are there.
Uninstalling apps also requires that you root your phone, a process most users may or may not want to experience. Hence it is better to disable bloatware instead of disabling them, and Android system has a built-in process of doing this for most apps.
If you find an app that won’t disable, you can use a third-party app to freeze it, but this also requires a rooted phone. You can make this your last resort solution.
How to Disable Crapware in Android Using Built-In Settings
On newer phones, disabling bloatware is easier and doesn’t need much root access. To do this:
- Go to Settings menu on your phone
- Scroll to Apps and tap on it
- Find the problematic app, and tap on it
- Go to the app’s information page, where you’ll find two buttons: Disable or Force Stop
- Tap Disable (you’ll get a popup saying that the action may cause errors in other apps, ignore this)
- You can also tap Force Stop or Clear Data
To re-enable the app, go back to the App Info page and tap Enable.
Uninstall or Disable Bloatware on Rooted Android Phones
Not all apps have the option to disable, so if you have an older version of Android that lacks this feature, use the steps below:
- Root your phone first
- Enable USB debugging by going to Settings>Apps>Developer Options
- Make a full back up before you continue
Once you run either of these steps to uninstall or disable bloatware in your Android phone, they should be completely disabled, and some space on your system will be available.
The apps won’t be visible in the menus, neither will they run in the background, but restart your device or launcher so the icons can disappear from the phone menus, otherwise they’re gone!
Elsier is an avid tech writer, who loves mobile apps, games, music, and cars. When she’s not catching up on the latest in tech, she’s binging on reruns of her favorite series.
