Our Android phones come loaded with many apps, some or many of which we hardly ever use. These are bloatware. Bloatware is basically any unwanted software on a device. It is literally annoying to have apps on your phone or tablet that you don’t ever use but they occupy so much of your phone’s storage. And to add to it, they keep on draining your phone’s battery by constantly running in the background.
How To Get Rid Of Bloatware on Android Phones
Getting rid of such bloatware would be a good option, wouldn’t it! Here is how you can do it:
Uninstalling the App:
You can simply choose to uninstall the bloatware.
Uninstalling the app, like it sounds, will completely remove the app from your device. However, you better think twice before doing this because uninstalling certain pre-installed apps could cause instability. It could block your phone from getting certain important updates.
Moreover, it may happen that once you uninstall the app because you don’t need it, but at some later time you might find the need to use that app. For some of the apps like the S Health that comes pre-installed on Samsung phones, you can install it anytime from the Play Store once you uninstall it from your phone. But this is not so for all the bloatware in your phone; not all of them are available in Play Store.
Also, uninstalling the pre-installed apps sometimes requires you to root your phone. And most of us would not want to do so.
So, lets then look at an alternate option, and that id disabling the app.
Disabling the App:
The option better than completely removing the bloatware from your phone is disabling that particular app. This feature is provided on all the android phones. Follow these simple steps:
- Open the ‘Settings’ menu on your home screen.
- Now select ‘Apps’, also called ‘Applications’ in some phones.
- Tap on ‘Manage Applications’. This step is skipped in some phones.
- This will open up a list of applications on your phone; the downloaded ones, the ones on SD card, the ones currently running, etc.
- Select the app that you don’t use and want to disable.
- Tap on it.
- You will see the info page of that respective app, with two buttons on the top, namely ‘Disable’ and ‘Force Stop’.
- Tap on the ‘Disable’ button.
- You’ll see a popup message that will tell you that disabling this app might cause other apps to work improperly.
- Don’t worry, go ahead and click on ‘Disable’.
- All done!
- Now you might as well want to tap the ‘Force Stop’ and ‘Clear Data’ buttons.
The thing good about this option is that if at a later time you feel the need to use this app, you can simply tap the ‘Enable’ option for this app. Simple as that.
On a Rooted Phone:
However, not all the apps have this ‘Disable’ option, although most of them have. For the apps that you cannot ‘freeze’, you can use a third-party app, to freeze it. However, for this, you need a rooted phone.
- For this, you’ll first need to root your phone. Now go to ‘Settings’.
- Then tap on ‘Applications’, then tap on ‘Developer Options’.
- Now enable USB debugging. It is recommended to make a full backup first to on the safe side.
You can use apps like ‘Titanium Backup’ which claims to freeze the bloatware. Other apps like ‘NoBloat’ and ‘App Quarantine’ can also be used though they are not as effective as Titanium Backup.
