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Root Built-in Applications (Identifying and Uninstalling)

cdsmith

Newbie
Jun 28, 2010
47
20
As someone mentioned earlier, the steps for uninstalling a built-in application are as follows:

1. Get a root prompt, either through adb or a terminal emulator on the phone.

2. Back up the whole app directory, perhaps using a file manager program since I don't think there's a cp command on the system by default. (I've long since installed Busybox, so I just use cp from that.)

3. Remount your system directory so it's writeable. (ALL commands in this post have a # in front of them; that's the # you should see on your screen already. Do NOT type it.)

# mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock4 /system

4. Change to the /system/app directory.

# cd /system/app

5. Delete (or rename) the applications you no longer want. Here are commands for all of the applications you're unlikely to want.

MySpace:
# mv MySpace.apk MySpace.junk

Socialite (called Aloha in some European phones):
# mv Aloha_SNS.apk Aloha_SNS.junk

Amazon Shopping App
# mv amazon.2010.3.18.mshop_signed.aligned.apk amazon.2010.3.18.mshop_signed.aligned.junk

Amazon MP3 Store
# mv amazonmp3_1.6+23_signed_zipaligned.apk amazonmp3_1.6+23_signed_zipaligned.junk

Facebook:
# mv com.facebook.katana.apk com.facebook.katana.junk

Visual VM:
# mv VVM_01_00_19.apk VVM_01_00_19.junk

ThinkFree Office (not sure why you'd want to remove this; it's pretty nice! I removed it just to make sure it doesn't break the phone, then put it back.)
# mv thinkdroid.apk thinkdroid.junk

That's as many apps as I dared to remove. Note: I *did* remove all these apps from my phone, and reboot just to make sure it still works. Yes, it still works.

6. (optional, do this only after you're happy with the phone now) Get the junk off your phone!

# ls *.junk
(At this point, make sure you recognize everything in that list.)
# cp *.junk /sdcard
# rm *.junk

Note: Do NOT accidentally hit the enter key instead of the dot after typing "rm *" That would be very, very, very bad... the kind of mistake everyone makes once in their life, but with luck you can be the exception to that rule!

If you want to know how to dig a little deeper and remove the built LG theme, I'm just not brave enough to help you there. Sorry! I did not remove any apps that seemed to me like they might be tied deeper into the core of the system.
 
Oops, step 7.... now that you've removed these apps from /system/app, if you go to Settings, Applications, Manage Applications, they will appear in the list there... you can uninstall them there, which will remove the leftover application data. You can identify them because instead of a normal app name, they will appear as something starting with "com.", will have a default Android icon, and when you select them, they will show as using 0 KB for the application, but something non-zero for data.
 
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flyinjoe, I honestly couldn't tell you. I didn't keep track, and I've done so much to this phone (installed busybox, and bash, for instance), that comparing it with someone else's phone would be useless.

I suspect you won't get a lot of space back, to be honest. Most of the stuff you are deleting lives in /system, which is a separate partition that's meant to be controlled entirely by the phone manufacturer. The free space on the /system partition is probably not usable for the purposes you might have in mind.

My goal was to clean up the application launcher menu. This worked great for that purpose.
 
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I removed socialite and facebook worked just fine. thanks cdsmith. I was searching for the name of the apk associate with socialite for forever.

btw... how did you get bash installed???

I need to update this: after removing socialite, the built in facebook widget (the one from LG/Verizon) is not working. I will try the actual program from facebook itself later today.
 
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shell bash for android - xda-developers has a link to a bash compiled for Android, and it works fine on the Ally. It's even been modified to run /sdcard/bash_profile on startup (useful since there is no $HOME). I have the following in my bash_profile:

export PATH=/system/xbin:/sbin:/system/sbin:/system/bin
if [[ ${EUID} == 0 ]] ; then
export PS1="android:\w# "
else
export PS1="android:\w$ "
fi

The first line was intended to make busybox (which I installed in /system/xbin) take precedence over the impoverished built-in shell utilities. You *do* need to remove a couple of busybox's default links, though, such as reboot and su, since you need the phone's version of those (or in the case of su, the version we installed during rooting). The rest just changes the shell prompt to include the current working directory, and identify this as my phone.

One note: I use ConnectBot as a terminal emulator, and what's labeled as tab (ALT-Q) does not trigger auto-complete. Pressing the OK button in the middle of the arrow keys four times seems to work, though. When connecting through adb, on the other hand, the arrow keys seem to be screwed up... perhaps there's a better TERM setting that will fix it (default TERM is "dumb").
 
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I removed a few programs yersterday from this phone, namely socialite an the amazon shopping vz voicemail, and amazon mp3. But here is how i uninstalled them.
1. I downloaded the free version of titanium backup.
2. I installed busybox using the titanium backup. You can run titanium backup, and then click the problems tab at the bottom of the screen, and it will install a working version of busybox for you .
3. After the busybox install, close titanium, an restart the program.
4. Open titanium backup, an look over all the apps. Find the ones you want to removed, and if you want, make a back up of them first. If your sure you don't want them, then just uninstall the apps.
5. Close out everything and reboot the phone, and then open the phones setting, and go to applications, manage applications, and remove the left over remnance of the programs you uninstalled via titanium backup. No need to remove them using adb, unless you just like doing it that way.
I want to remove LG home, and themes so bad i can't stand it, but im afraid to try it. Anyone else tried this?
 
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once you root your phone, download TITANIUM BACKUP. From there, you can directly uninstall applications, while seeing their name and icon. It's beyond simple.

I removed: themes, lghome, lg calendar, messaging 1.0, face book, myspace, socialite, thinkfree, live wallpaper, music visualizations, live walpaper picker, magic smoke thing, backup assistant, email, ... gosh ican't remember them all..., car home, i dont remember it all... if it wasn't necessary for normal function and i didn't use it, out it went.
 
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i didn't, because i read that awhile ago. oh yea, all the amazon things are gone. i found it annoying that removing all those programs didn't free up any space for more apps (except a tiny bit from their data probably). the stock apps are on their own partition, but it would be nice to take that extra space i opened up and move it to the useful partition. or is there a way to install things onto that other partition?
 
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