How to Effectively Remove Android Crapware
Mar 8, 2013 05:27 PM EDT by 
Whether it’s an unwanted NFL app preloaded on your Verizon phone or AT&T’s unnecessary Navigator service, every Android phone sold by carrier comes festooned with crapware that you can’t uninstall. Even worse, if you check your settings menu, you’ll see that some of these apps are actively running in the background, devouring your system resources.
Unless you’ve rooted your phone — a risky process that voids your warranty — you cannot delete these apps from your storage memory. However, with a few simple steps, on any Android 4.0 or greater device, you can make them disappear from the apps menu and prevent them from loading in the background.
- Navigate to Settings. You can get to the settings menu either in your apps menu or, on most phones, by pulling down the notification drawer and tapping a button there.
- Select the Apps submenu. On some phones this menu will have a slightly different name such as Application Manager.
- Swipe right to the All apps list. Ignore the lists of Running and Downloaded apps. You want the All apps list.
- Select the app you wish to disable. A properties screen appears with a button for Force Stop on the upper left and another for either Disable or Uninstall updates on the upper right side.
- Tap Uninstall updates if necessary. If the right button says simply Uninstall, the app is probably not a preload and it can be completely removed simply by tapping that button.
- Tap Disable.
The offending app will now disappear from the All apps menu and will no longer launch in the background. If you want to re-enable an app, simply look for it at the bottom of the list of All apps in settings, select it and tap Enable.
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May 4th, 2013 at 12:55 pm
If it’s preinstalled crapware, you usually can’t disable it. The button will be greyed out.
May 4th, 2013 at 8:09 pm
Does not work on Droid RAZR Android version 4.1.2.
May 4th, 2013 at 8:15 pm
I’ve found that some apps and widgets still run even after I’ve disabled them. No option to uninstall, either. Drives me crazy that my battery gets used up by this crapware preinstalled on my phone.
May 4th, 2013 at 8:42 pm
I take back what I said about not working on the RAZR 4.1.2. Some apps you can disable directly as in the instructions above, but some you need to uninstall updates, back out the the apps menus, go back in, and then you can see the disable button.
May 5th, 2013 at 8:30 am
Doesn’t work on an LG Vortex running 2.2.2 – no real disabling functions at all, sadly.
May 6th, 2013 at 1:37 am
How do you delete videos that have automatically been sent to google?
May 7th, 2013 at 3:15 pm
as an office how do I know which apps are crap ware and not some system needed software
May 9th, 2013 at 8:43 pm
It is said on rooted devices. That’s the only way. And then you freeze them with another application like where’s my phone.