First of all, there is no way to disable or uninstall apps without removing them from the system image or without using root.
“Disabling” or “uninstalling” apps using ADB can cause permanent breakage or breakage that would go unnoticed, etc.
Some people think that using ADB to “disable” or “uninstall” apps will boost their privacy and security and make their phone reasonably private, which is just not the case.
I used ADB to uninstall the YouTube app from an old phone in order to set ReVanced as my default app for opening YT links, everything went good. You just have to follow instructions.
YouTube is just a regular application that was just bundled with your device. Also, on every single phone that I ever used, you can disable YouTube app without ADB.
Also, try to create another user profile, and that YouTube app will probably be there.
You’re right, I could have simply disable youtube and this is what I did at first.
Unfortunately, this is not possible on every phones by default, and when I managed to just disable it, even after that, it stills remained the default application for opening YT links… So I had no other choice but to delete it.
Such as? I wouldn’t think anything is permanent, and it entirely depends on what is disabled.
We don’t need to recommend against it, but at the same time we don’t recommend it either. In some cases it may be useful simply if you want to disable something from running that you don’t use anyway, eg like samsung’s bixby crap.
When I tried this on a Samsung A54, there were a lot of apps that couldn’t be “reenabled” or "reinstalled,” and the only way to revert those changes was to factory reset.
There are all sorts of breakage that can occur when you do something that you aren’t supposed to do.
One good example is people who think they’re smart by disabling Google Play Services, but then they don’t receive important feature or security updates.
https://source.android.com/docs/core/ota/modular-system
If you disable a simple app like YouTube, then it’s fine, but if you disable something more complex and still have daemons running in the background while thinking that everything is disabled, then it’s a different story.
That’s really a skill issue. For example; uninstalling Xiaomi bloatware such as Mi Browser, GetApps (Xiaomi’s app store) would do nothing BUT uninstalling the Security would cause the user to end up in a bootloop.
What does it matter? If you click “disable” or remove it via adb it is gone until you factory reset.
That was true before something like Universal android debloater project was introduced, which specifically describes bellow each app what are the risks if removed.
It will make your phone private. I have adb debloated 3 different models Motorola phones and with wireshark testing i checked that the phone is not leaking any data to any company. The only exception being Xtranet, which belongs to Qualcomm. It pings it once or twice a day. Thats it.
Sure, compared to GrapheneOS it is not as private but it is waaay more private than stock. But what is good about this approach in comparison to other aosp custom roms is that the baseband part of the phone works bug free (calls and text). And here in Europe people who travel a lot and use roaming and connect to different carriers often custom roms do not work as flawlessly. Maybe the computer part of the phone works good but not the baseband part - calls and text.
Samsung is literally the most bloated stock Android. Try this with a Motorola.
In the past 2 years there wasn’t any “imporant” update coming from google play services from what i last checked. The updates from GPS are very rare and minimalistic.
Again, i debloated 3 phones and none of them had running daemons on the background. I did extensive testing to make sure of it.
I was also very hesitant to this approach like you but in the end for some people it is better - it saves you money (stock android is very cheap), calls and text work without any problems, you can easily replace the device if lost/broken etc.