Nowadays Samsung smartphones contains a lot of bloatware. This methods of removing or disabling such apps build with using Android Debug Bridge (ADB).
Before we start, make sure that you have ADB installed. For example for macOS, you need to tap a cask:
$ brew tap homebrew/cask
and install android-platform-tools:
$ brew cask install android-platform-tools
After that enable USB debugging on your smartphone: Settings -> Developer options -> USB debugging
Connect your smartphone to laptop and trust connection.
Now we can use list of commands:
adb shell - open terminal on your device
pm list packages - show list of packages
pm list packages -d - show list of disabled packages
pm uninstall --user 0 <package_name> - uninstall choosen package
pm disable-user --user 0 <package_name> - disable choosen package
Package name for each installed application on your device could be get via one of the tools:
Unfortunately, I did not find an alternative on F-Droid.
For example, this is how it looks like in App Inpector:
Now, let’s take everything together and see who it looks like on real device:
# Verify connection with device
$ adb devices
List of devices attached
2550a9086c0d7ece device
# Open terminal
$ adb shell
crownlte:/ $
# Get list of disabled facebook packages
crownlte:/ $ pm list packages -d | grep com.facebook
package:com.facebook.services
package:com.facebook.katana
package:com.facebook.system
package:com.facebook.appmanager
# Uninstall Facebook (example of bunch operations)
crownlte:/ $ for i in $(pm list packages -d | grep com.facebook | sed s/package://); do echo $i; pm uninstall --user 0 $i ; done
com.facebook.services
Success
com.facebook.katana
Success
com.facebook.system
Success
com.facebook.appmanager
Success
# Uninstall Google Chrome
crownlte:/ $ pm uninstall --user 0 com.android.chrome
Success
# Disable Bixby
crownlte:/ $ pm disable-user --user 0 com.samsung.android.bixby.wakeup
Package com.samsung.android.bixby.wakeup new state: disabled-user
Bloatware list of applications pre-installed on Samsung smartphones:
- Facebook
- com.facebook.services
- com.facebook.katana
- com.facebook.system
- com.facebook.appmanager
- Google
- com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox
- com.google.android.tts
- com.google.android.youtube
- com.android.chrome
- Microsoft
- com.microsoft.skydrive
- com.microsoft.office.word
- com.microsoft.office.excel
- com.microsoft.office.powerpoint
- Linkedin
- com.linkedin.android
- Bixby
- com.samsung.android.bixby.wakeup
- com.samsung.android.bixby.service
- com.samsung.android.visionintelligence
- com.samsung.android.bixby.agent
- com.samsung.android.bixby.agent.dummy
- com.samsung.android.bixbyvision.framework
This is list of course not full and highly dependable from your needs.
Provided method was tested on Samsung Note 9 and easily can help us to clean a smartphone for bloatware and reduce some noise made by it.
Please let me know, if any other services you can recommend to uninstall or disable.