Disabling touchwiz......

joesixpack said:

Why don't you go to Settings, More, Default Applications and select Apex Launcher as your default Home app? Shouldn't have to get rid of Touchwiz.

Besides, stuff like Air Gestures, Smart Stay, etc. aren't Touchwiz features - they're Samsung phone features. Just turn them off in Settings.

Am I being too simplistic? Apologies if so.

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Apex is the default. Thing is the tw launcher keeps starting up, even though apex is the default, therefore it runs in the background along with apex so basically you have 2 launchers running, not one.

The app I have is spose to kill the tw launcher once it starts back up again but it evidently doesn't work. This is why I wanted to just turn it off or disable it or freeze it so it "couldn't" start back up.

Just fyi...,..I don't want to disable Samsung stuff such as like the settings, because you can't disable that stuff anyways, just the touchwiz "launcher". You can disable or freeze the tw launcher though and use a different launcher of choice, without any I'll affects. The tw launcher is just like any other launcher it's just Samsung's branded launcher.

joesixpack said:

Wow, that's something I didn't know. I rum Nova myself, and have never seen any evidence of Touchwiz running. How do you know its running, and how can I check to see if its running on mine?

AFAIK, you have to be rooted to freeze apps. Ttanium Backup does that

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Go on play store and get an app called "home manager", the icon looks like two houses side by side.

One installed open it up and you'll see all the launchers available. I have two tw launchers that are stock (simple and the normal one) and then it'll show the others to. You should see tw and nova launcher in the list. You can long press and like kill, auto kill, uninstall etc. But it will show what is running as well, it says in red "running" I think it is.

I'm guessing something in the system is accessed and then restarts tw, that or something makes it auto start.

Tw along with another launcher can and had caused lag and pauses, simply because there are two launchers running. I've tested this theory when I was rooted, in two different ways.....I have frozen tw launcher and used strictly apex or nova, and I've also gone into the system/app folder and removed the apk file and rebooted leaving only apex or nova as the main launcher.

The rest of the phone worked fine, even the Samsung apps, they aren't tied to tw launcher at all.

Mr. Lucky said:

I no longer own an S4 so can't verify this 100%, but I believe that if you remove all widgets from the TW screens and then go back and set Apex as default, TW will no longer show as running in the background.

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Ah cool I'll have to try that, thanks. I'll report back and let you know.

Update: Got aapex back on. I ported the home screens, then went back to two and I just got rid of everything on each screen, icons, shortcuts, widgets etc....killed tw, then made apex default. So far so good, tw hasn't started back up. I am keeping a very close eye on it via reboots, starting apps etc, so l will let you know in a few days how it goes.

Thanks again for the tip. I never even thought of the widgets, that would make sense though, the widget on tw would start tw again.

Update:
It looks as if I was mistaken about tw launcher and Samsung apps being tied to one another and I deeply apologize if I mislead anyone, that wasn't my intention.

It seems tw launcher and at least Samsung hub app are tied to one another. I was running apps that were Samsung only and I ran Samsung hub. When I checked home manager directly after that tw launcher didn't appear to be running. A few mins later though when I checked again tw launcher was again running and Samsung hub was the only thing I had run before that.

So I guess it's inevitable that you either deal with both launchers running, or run only tw .

I'd run towelroot that doesn't trip the Knox trigger, and root, but sadly sprints last update plugged that android exploit hole so now towelroot doesn't work anymore. I'm hoping the dev finds a work around for it, but until then I guess I'm sticking with tw launcher.

Just a lil tidbit of info, tw launcher (not tw) cannot be disabled or frozen or anything else without having root access.

Think I found a workaround. Using a task killer and have only tw launcher as the only thing on the auto kill list. So between the autokill in home manager app and the autokill in task manager it seems to keep out killed.
The only adverse affects I can see is slightly more battery usage as its killing the tw launcher anytime it pops up. Other than that I cannot see any ill affects at all.

For now I'll use this method as this is the only one I can find that works right more aside from rooting.

Podivin said:

I'm not sure how having higher battery usage due to killing the app over and over is better than having it run in the background. But I guess if you're happy that's all the matters.

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Yeah heh, I just ended up switching back to tw launcher until the Dev of towelroot finds a workaround to root again.

Update:
Just read the dev of towelroot now works for Google so he won't be releasing an updated version, so that means once all the carriers release an update to fix the exploit and plug the hole, no more towelroot. It was a fun run while it lasted.