Any generalized/centralized debloating or "safe to remove" lists? - Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi. Does anyone know if there exists anywhere any sort of guide or list that details which press-installed apps and APKs are (usually) safe to remove from Android devices, for debloating purposes?
Searching around, I see a lot of threads in device-specific forums, but I haven't found anything more generic.
It seems like there is a lot of duplicated effort going on, with owners of different devices researching from scratch what each of the built-in apps does. It would be great if there was some pooling of resources. Maybe there already is. Anyone know?

Related

Info on Rooting

So I'm fairly new to android having been on the iOS scene for quite a while now, and I've always jailbroke my phones to get the most out of them.
Now I've started using android, I'm interested in rooting but don't really fully understand it yet. Custom ROMs, Kernels etc etc, its a lot more in depth than jailbreaking and I was wondering if there were any threads, or sites (or anyone willing to post about it) explaining what its all about, the benefits, drawbacks, why people do it etc so I can get a good understanding about it before I start messing around.
Any help/info would be greatly appreciated.
Rooting is a way of allowing apps to get superuser privileges. Also for modifying parts of the OS that you couldn't normally access. The advantages are that you can flash custom firmware. Remove stock bloatware. Block ads. Do cwm backups. The kernel is the area between the phone os and the hardware. Different kernels tweak different settings. Which one you chose will depends on what you want to achieve. Performance battery etc. I wouldn't worry about kernels for.the moment. Rooting the SG3 currently does not change the stock kernel anyway. Look for xda member chainfire he is the man to follow. All I can suggest is read up on the forums as much as you can. Don't touch a thing until you understand the core of any instructions your attempting to.follow. Good luck
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium
The main reason for jailbreaking is the ability to sideload apps (install apps that are not from the official market such as alternative keyboards, Emulators, ...) e.g. from Cydia.
Android phones already support this feature out-of-the-box, you just have to tick the corresponding box to confirm you understand the risk of possible malware when installing apps you found somewhere on the internet.
Based on this feature there exist several alternative markets, SlideMe and Amazon being the most popular.
Additionally Android allows you to modify most of the system starting from the launcher to dialer and up to low-level features such as equalizer and notification LED control by installing a corresponding app.
Root gives you access to far more low-level features such as backing up apps including their 'secret' data (Titanium Backup), getting the S3 to use mass-storage mode, remove Advertisement (AdFree), get detailled informatiaons about your phone's battery drain (BetterBatteryStats)...
Samsung ROM's have gotten better but people always want other, new or changed features or upgrades to OS-versions Samsung is not officially supporting. For instance the old Galaxy S1 never got an official upgrade to Android 4.0 but the Cyanogenmod project made it available.
Samsung-Kernels obviously do not support such features such as overclocking the CPU (which I wouldn't recommend anyway on the S3) and have good but not excellent optimizations. E.g. the sound processor can gain huge improvements by simple software optimizations (Voodoo Sound) and the phone feel much snappier with tweaked CPU scaling algorithms. Additionally custom kernels can e.g. include NTFS support which Samsung does not provide due to license and potential stability issues.
In conclusion I'd say, stay with the original ROM if there is nothing that really bothers you but I'd recommend flashing a custom rooted kernel such as Siyah as it brings direct improvements.
Thanks for the replies.... I'm trying to find as much as I can to read up on, but I'm yet to find a decent website with some info explaining everything from the start. I prefer to know exactly what everything is, what it does etc etc before I start messing around.
Anyone know anywhere I can find this info, threads containing beginners guides to rooting or something similar?
joeyh51 said:
Thanks for the replies.... I'm trying to find as much as I can to read up on, but I'm yet to find a decent website with some info explaining everything from the start. I prefer to know exactly what everything is, what it does etc etc before I start messing around.
Anyone know anywhere I can find this info, threads containing beginners guides to rooting or something similar?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here is a good guide on rooting http://androidforums.com/evo-3d-all-things-root/389787-beginners-guide-rooting-android-devices.html
Google is your best friend. I am going to add a section on my website www.modmymobile.co.uk with a simple breakdown.
Have a look on YouTube there is a few step by step guides.. only downside to rooting is you will lose your warrenty

[Q] A site/way to to advance search for android apps?

Perhaps its just me because I haven't found many posts relating to this but I have had a hard time finding apps in many cases because it seems like many places don't give advance search options anymore? Things like specifying license, ratings, popularity, language availability, last updated when, not to mention search by say permission (ie least invasive though i suspect that is a bit of a pipe-dream) searching by or sorting by these parameters etc etc etc. Amazon, Quixey, and Appbrain and perhaps to a tiny extent alternativeto help but none of them are killer (ironically [to me] I find play almost useless for searching at least, kind of counter productive as it just floods me with tons of stuff and little way to narrow it down that i am aware of). I am just hoping maybe there is some site that scrapes other sites or a way to run regexs on sites or something ? Any constructive thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

[N900V] [KitKat] [4.4.2] [NC4] Comprehensive Default Applications Information

This is a piece of very new work that is in progress, but the framework is coming into place and I wanted to share this with the community for feedback and insights.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gdVCIbstn3G-GJV1qPaBjlnD7h4bBcERUpgUSm-AI1Y/edit?usp=sharing
My goal is to both catalog and research the default applications that are installed. With this information I plan to better reduce the installed applications while maintaining functionality. This work is inspired by my own tooling around that I have done on the Galaxy Tab 2 as well as others from this sub-forum that have done similar such as dkido and airmaxx23 (links below). I initially tried their suggestions, however after I found them to be both too aggressive and not aggressive enough in different regards.
With this in mind, I just restored my phone via Odin and then Kies and I am currently working on documenting the apps that exist in /data/app, /system/app, system/priv-app. From there I will be using SD Maid to associate the generic "name" with the the package/process name and .apk. Afterwards I am not sure exactly how I will proceed but I will essentially collect as much data as possible about each individual application so that myself (and anyone else) can decide on what to keep and what to remove.
I plan to test each app by freezing it before ultimately deciding on removing or keeping it for my own install. I will document this process as best as I am able for my own reference if nothing else.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2767457
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2794481
Edit: And just for clarification. This is my current goal, hopefully I will not give up but we shall see.
I'll Look forward to your findings just curious how you plan to test functionality after each app removal. There is so many things that could break that you might not realize it's broken until it's too late and you have multiple apps removed.
AdamT6 said:
This is a piece of very new work that is in progress, but the framework is coming into place and I wanted to share this with the community for feedback and insights.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gdVCIbstn3G-GJV1qPaBjlnD7h4bBcERUpgUSm-AI1Y/edit?usp=sharing
My goal is to both catalog and research the default applications that are installed. With this information I plan to better reduce the installed applications while maintaining functionality. This work is inspired by my own tooling around that I have done on the Galaxy Tab 2 as well as others from this sub-forum that have done similar such as dkido and airmaxx23 (links below). I initially tried their suggestions, however after I found them to be both too aggressive and not aggressive enough in different regards.
With this in mind, I just restored my phone via Odin and then Kies and I am currently working on documenting the apps that exist in /data/app, /system/app, system/priv-app. From there I will be using SD Maid to associate the generic "name" with the the package/process name and .apk. Afterwards I am not sure exactly how I will proceed but I will essentially collect as much data as possible about each individual application so that myself (and anyone else) can decide on what to keep and what to remove.
I plan to test each app by freezing it before ultimately deciding on removing or keeping it for my own install. I will document this process as best as I am able for my own reference if nothing else.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2767457
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2794481
Edit: And just for clarification. This is my current goal, hopefully I will not give up but we shall see.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here is a link to my post with all of the apps that I have removed from 4.4.2 (NC4), it may be helpful for you. Keep in mind that some apps still run even when frozen, your best bet would be to just move them to an external sdcard or rename them.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2794481
airmaxx23 said:
Here is a link to my post with all of the apps that I have removed from 4.4.2 (NC4), it may be helpful for you. Keep in mind that some apps still run even when frozen, your best bet would be to just move them to an external sdcard or rename them.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2794481
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks airmaxx23, I referenced you and that link above.
Grompy said:
I'll Look forward to your findings just curious how you plan to test functionality after each app removal. There is so many things that could break that you might not realize it's broken until it's too late and you have multiple apps removed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah Grompy, it will no doubt come down to what I find necessary and that which I do not use may well get missed (or straight up eradicated ). With that said I plan to reference other sources and hopefully that will help.
Here is the document containing my aims and goals for my own install which should help clarify what might get missed and what should not: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12BAY77gMZC752JEzA43q1Lml2jEZVTn5fvIswoOdtYg/edit?usp=sharing
Moving forward and for the time being, here are some links that I have pulled from the generic Note 3 forums that should be of added help. The Google docs link provides much of what I am aiming for here but is a bit messy.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2642101&page=2
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2642101&page=3
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2464694
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2624696
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2759839
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2687484
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=51304796&postcount=22
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=51422639&postcount=29
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2687484&page=5
https://docs.google.com/a/anihil.or...ZzBfWlR4MC03aDMyZ1BDUFNqU0E&usp=sharing#gid=0
Just another helpful link I found courtesy of the Jasmine Rom thread.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=53263649&postcount=1103
For the time being I am exploring NC4 compatible ROMs and I may not make much if any progress on this. Some handy links above though if nothing else.

How can I learn how Android works?

I'm not a developer but I have knowledge about Linux and how PCs in general work. Is there any book/course that explains how android works on a deeper level? I'm not interested in apps or user UIs, I want to know the deeper levels like how partitioning works, how the OS is loaded, why some bootloaders are locked by default, what a custom recovery is or what is the first thing to load when you power on your phone/tablet (do phones have a BIOS like PCs or anything equivalent?). Thanks in advance.
I'm also interested in this, but I think the answer is it's a bunch of undocumented proprietary baseband processor junk nobody will share for the boot, then the rest is basically a Linux distro made by 1000 monkeys on 1000 typewriters copy/pasting stuff provided by their hardware vendors together, and the components of that also probably have no documentation or incorrect documentation.
Just browsing through directory structures on a rooted phone there's so much unused and inaccessible junk like config files for really old versions of android, random vendor apks that aren't configured, and firmware for other processors strewn all over, sometimes multiple copies of the same structure, that it makes no sense. It looks like a bunch of vendors gave their support libraries to manufacturers with the intent they'd delete the unused parts and copy the used parts in, but the manufacturers don't understand how to do that so they just paste the same full directory structure several different places until it starts working.
If it made any sense, some people would just learn it and rooting new phones wouldn't be hard.
dan2525 said:
I'm not a developer but I have knowledge about Linux and how PCs in general work. Is there any book/course that explains how android works on a deeper level? I'm not interested in apps or user UIs, I want to know the deeper levels like how partitioning works, how the OS is loaded, why some bootloaders are locked by default, what a custom recovery is or what is the first thing to load when you power on your phone/tablet (do phones have a BIOS like PCs or anything equivalent?). Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The rabbit hole goes as deep as you want it to. I have plenty of information to get you started. Happy digging!
*A general overview of the android boot process, thanks to the Lineage OS developers.
*An old, but good read on reverse engineering aboot.
*And a much more recent article on reverse engineering android. It gets very detailed in this one. It also goes into the low level processes of android. Like; What loads the bootloader? That kind of stuff. I think this is what you're after. Hope it helps.
About the bios question. The short answer is, "kind of". They have a very simple and proprietary one that's not easy to access. It also does not function in the same ways that a PC bios does. It's more like a motherboard programmer. It's hard to explain. The last article goes into some of that.
Spaceminer said:
The rabbit hole goes as deep as you want it to. I have plenty of information to get you started. Happy digging!
*A general overview of the android boot process, thanks to the Lineage OS developers.
*An old, but good read on reverse engineering aboot.
*And a much more recent article on reverse engineering android. It gets very detailed in this one. It also goes into the low level processes of android. Like; What loads the bootloader? That kind of stuff. I think this is what you're after. Hope it helps.
About the bios question. The short answer is, "kind of". They have a very simple and proprietary one that's not easy to access. It also does not function in the same ways that a PC bios does. It's more like a motherboard programmer. It's hard to explain. The last article goes into some of that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you know if there is any tool that lists all the various initscripts and settings in use on a running system? I'd like to remove Google entirely from my phone, but there are so many firmwares and initscripts all over the place that I can't even figure out which ones are actually used to run the system. Half of the settings files, properties, and commands return 0 results or 3-4 useless results when searching for them on the internet.
ZHNN said:
Do you know if there is any tool that lists all the various initscripts and settings in use on a running system? I'd like to remove Google entirely from my phone, but there are so many firmwares and initscripts all over the place that I can't even figure out which ones are actually used to run the system. Half of the settings files, properties, and commands return 0 results or 3-4 useless results when searching for them on the internet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The best way to remove google entirely is to flash a custom ROM or GSI if your device supports it. You really only need to look in system/app and system/priv-app for google stuff. Some phones use stock Google apps for things like the Calendar or MMS. So, to run google-less you may need to replace some system apps as well. Just a warning, even if you already know this. Removing certain apps, even google apps, may cause problems for normal operation. Definitely make a backup before deleting anything in the system.
ZHNN said:
Do you know if there is any tool that lists all the various initscripts and settings in use on a running system? I'd like to remove Google entirely from my phone, but there are so many firmwares and initscripts all over the place that I can't even figure out which ones are actually used to run the system. Half of the settings files, properties, and commands return 0 results or 3-4 useless results when searching for them on the internet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm no expert but have been running lineageos 14.1 for some time now. It is a version of android 7.1 in which everything google has been removed. I use it with microG which replaces google play services.
You may wish to look into it instead of re-inventing the wheel.
I use it with a firewall (AFWall +), and Xprivacylua for additional privacy.

Unable to delete the forced ESSENTIAL APP Tiktok

Hi all . Anyone else had the Tiktok app forced onto the A10 after a compulsory update and now on the O/S as an ESSENTIAL APP and cannot be deleted. Even the icon cannot be deleted off the screen.
So for me this is a step too far and wont be buying any Samsung products again. The phone was about to go in the electrical bin but I came across a program called ADB. Anyone used this to delete Tiktok. The app is not even listed in the apps section. So as its built into the O/S can ADB actually delete it permanently. As many are saying its not an essential app and some say its due to a lucrative deal . Odd Samsung wanting democracy yet force this on those who don't wont it globally. Its about blatant lack of democratic choice. I do know some newer Samsung Android owners that have not had it forced upon them. So am wondering if Samsung thought the older phone users may not complain so much is one of just several thoughts that come into mind.
I've not used ADB and see it appears to be used by developers only. In short can it delete this app built into the O/S - otherwise phone goes in the bin. Any non developer done this. I've searched many threads and am surprised no other comments concerning Tiktok as an essential app ? and one must accept it or have no phone. So I have no phone currently. Am looking at alternatives. Hard resets make no difference. Thanks for any info or thoughts on this.

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