How to remove bloatware from the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 without root access

A lot of modern Android flagship phones ship with bloatware. This isn’t exclusive to just one or two manufacturers in particular as most popular devices mentioned in our best Android phones collection come with some pre-installed applications that you didn’t ask for. It’s not an enjoyable experience to see bloatware on your shiny new $1,000 flagship device and it’s certainly not acceptable on one of the most expensive flagship phones on the market right now — the Galaxy Z Fold 4. Yes, this particular phone comes with a lot of pre-installed applications out of the box. In this article, we’ll show you how to remove bloatware from the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4.

These pre-installed applications don’t get in the way of using your phone on a daily basis. However, they do occupy the space in your phone, taking up storage or even using system resources in the background. It’s best to get rid of them if you don’t see yourself using these apps. Here are a few simple steps using which you can clean up your new Galaxy Z Fold 4 and remove the “uninstallable” bloatware.

Note: You can follow the steps mentioned in this article to clean up your other Android smartphones too.

How to Uninstall Bloatware from Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 without root access

In this tutorial, we’ll explain how to remove bloatware from your phone using both ADB as well as ADB App Removal GUIs such as the “Universal Android Debloater”. One of the best things about using these methods is that they don’t need the phone’s root access, meaning you should be able to do this without too much hassle.

Caution: Uninstalling system applications that are critical for a phone to function properly can be extremely dangerous and may result in malfunctions or even a bricked smartphone. We recommend removing only the ones that you think are absolutely unnecessary and won’t affect the functionality of your device.

Step 1: Enable USB Debugging on your Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4

• The first thing you need to do is open the Settings app on your Galaxy Z Fold 4 and scroll all the way down to find the About phone section.
  
• Now, look for the Software information option and select it to reveal all the software details of your phone including the Android version, One UI version, etc.
  
• Look for the Build number option within this page and tap on it several times to enable Developer Options.
• Once done, you’ll now be able to see Developer Options below the About phone option on the main Settings page.
  
• Enter Developer Options and scroll down till you find the USB debugging option under the Debugging section.
• Select this option and choose “OK” when prompted to enable USB Debugging on your Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4.
  

Step 2: Remove installed packages using ADB

• You’ll need ADB installed on your computer for this particular step, so make sure you have that sorted before proceeding. You can check out our ‘how to install ADB’ guide to get it done very easily.
• The next step is to plug in the Galaxy Z Fold 4 into your computer and change the USB settings from Charging phone only mode to Transferring files mode when prompted.
• Those using a Windows computer for this process can browse to the directory where ADB is installed and press Shift + right-click on the name of the directory and open command/PowerShell window here.
• Mac users will need to launch a Terminal window and navigate to the ADB directory using cd <path to the directory>. Just to give you an understanding, it’s cd /Users/karthiksmac/Desktop/platform-toolon my Macbook.
  
• Once you’re connected, simply type adb devices and hit enter to see the serial number of your phone. On a Mac, you’ll have to enter ./adb devices to see the serial number.
• This code will trigger a prompt on your phone, asking you for authorization to proceed. You can hit Allow to proceed to the next step.
  
• After that, re-run the adb devices or ./adb devices code to see the serial number.

Step 3: Removing the bloatware

• The first thing you need to do here is type adb shell or ./adb shell and hit enter.
• You can then use the following command to populate a list of Samsung apps that are installed on your phone:
  

  pm list packages

  
  
• You can also filter out just the Samsung app package but the list would still be quite long. Instead, we recommend downloading an app called Package Name Viewer 2.0 to identify the right app that you want to uninstall.
  

  Package Name Viewer 2.0 (Free, Google Play) →

• Once you have the correct package name of the app that you want to uninstall, you can use the following command to remove it from your Galaxy Z Fold 4.
  

  pm uninstall -k –user 0 NameOfPackage

• Please note that you’ll have to replace “NameOfPackage” from the command mentioned above with the full package name of the app that you want to uninstall, without any ” or <>.

Continue to find the right package name of the bloatware using the Package Name Viewer 2.0 app and uninstall them. And that’s it, you’ve now successfully uninstalled the bloatware from your Galaxy Z Fold 4. It’s not very complicated to remove bloatware but it will take some time for you to go through the app and manually punch the package names.

If that’s too tedious and you don’t want to go through each app individually, you can also use an app removal GUI to remove the bloatware in a single batch. You can head over to our XDA Forums’ “Universal Android Debloater” thread to download and learn the steps involved in using that particular GUI.

It’s relatively easier to use a GUI to remove the bloatware because you can select a bunch of packages and simply hit a button to wipe them from your phone. It’ll also give you an option to restore them with a single tap of a button, which is very handy in case you end up removing a package by mistake.

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Closing Thoughts

It’s always quite annoying to deal with bloatware but, thankfully, it’s a fairly simple task. You can use the same methods mentioned in this article to remove bloatware from other Android smartphones too, so feel free to get started and clean up your Android phone.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4

The Galaxy Z Fold 4 has fewer compromises, is more durable and overall a much better smartphone than its predecessors.

Buy from Samsung

If you just bought a brand new Galaxy Z Fold 4 for yourself, then you might be interested in checking out our collection of the best cases for it. It’s an expensive phone so why not protect it with a case if you haven’t already? We’ve also rounded up some of the best chargers if you want to pick up a new fast charger for the Galaxy Z Fold 4.

The post How to remove bloatware from the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 without root access appeared first on XDA.

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