Advice on removing Play Store, Play Services, and Gemini from Android
from ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com to degoogle@lemmy.ml on 16 Aug 21:29
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/51266819
from ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com to degoogle@lemmy.ml on 16 Aug 21:29
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/51266819
I have ADB, UAD, and even Shazuku with Canta. However, I tried removing Play Store and Play Services, but got my phone stuck in a boot loop. I have not tried to remove Gemini yet, but fear the same will happen. Insular (Island) will not allow me to move the services out of my persoanl profile, and Shelter will not work at all. Does anyone have a hack for this?
I do not want any Google crap on my device period. I have Samsung Galaxy 25 Ultra that I bought 6 months ago before realizing how ridiculous everything is.
threaded - newest
Would flashing a vanilla ROM be an option?
Maybe. If my provider would accept it. Do you mean an Android version without all the garbage?
I am unable to use Graphene or Lineage with my provider. I might need to switch.
Yes, that.
How might one go about doing this? I can’t afford to buy a new phone but I really want to be free from the corpo bs.
Phone systems can be somewhat volatile (is that the word?), so while the process isn't as hard as tutorials paint it to be, if you're worried about bricking your device for tinkering, I'd suggest leaving it aside for now.
Or, stretching a bit, if you have the money to at least get the cheapest phone you can find (usually old/used ones), you can use it as a burner/throway phone to test and get familiarized with the process first.
Depend from ROM of vendor on some it deeply integrated in system that will cause bootloop if u have oneui version equal or higher than 8,u cannot unlock bootloader otherwise if u are on version 7 yet stop ant updates unlock bootloader and try install custom rom
I am on 2025 Android, so it is far from that old. I was dumb to not get a different phone.
Unless you can install LineageOS on an S25 Ultra, your best bet is to trade for a Pixel and immediately flash with grapheneos. Samsung is just as invasive with all their oem apps.
I was actually able to remove all those. I kept the phone app and the file app just in case my Fossfy apps did nit work. There is also Galaxy AI but I have not yet related it to an apk to remove it. I succeeded in removing Bixby, Youtube, and many other similar annoyances.
I have an S24, Gemini can be safely removed using Canta but is sometimes reinstalled when Samsung push out updates which is annoying. You can disable the play store without causing a boot loop but as far as I can tell there’s no way around play services since it can’t be disabled. I’m just making do with this phone for now and plan to get something I can install a custom ROM on later but it really sucks.
I was able to disable play services. It has not caused issues I am aware of, but I started deleting and blocking with NextDNS before I connected the phone to my provider, so maybe that helped. If you have a laptop or desktop, abd+uad might work.