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Several years ago, a friend of mine was working on a Samsung S8 Active. He was trying to remove most of the apps on it so it was just a basic phone. He had some instructions for a Ponderosa system. He was having trouble with several things so I was helping him. We got a list of all the packages on the phone using ADB and then copied them into a text editor. We removed the name of any package that we didn't want and then saved the file and pushed it back onto the phone using ADB again. I'm not certain but there might have been an app or something on the phone that had something to do with it as well but the end result was that only the apps on the list were left on the phone. I believe that we could put a password in on the phone and the apps came back but I'm not 100% sure.

Since then I have lost the papers that had the instructions on them and the place we originally got them from no longer has them either. I have another Samsung S8 Active that needs the same system (or simular) put on it. I know how to get a list of all the app package names using ADB.

adb shell pm list packages

But does anyone know of a system that would be capable of removing apps by pushing a file to the phone? Is there an app that would work like I described? Any help would be appreciated.

Edit: I am working with a Windows 10 computer. I installed xargs but it says The '<' operator is reserved for future use. when I try to run xargs -l adb uninstall < pkgs2rm. Is there a different character to use?

ajarrow
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  • push your own shell script – alecxs Feb 09 '22 at 13:48
  • @alecxs Not gonna lie, I haven't done much with adb and that doesn't make any sense. I mean I know that you can push files to the phone via adb but what do I push and where to? – ajarrow Feb 09 '22 at 14:29
  • Does this answer your question? How to uninstall an app when "Uninstall" dialog is not shown? – Robert Feb 09 '22 at 14:33
  • @Robert Not really. I guess I could go through and uninstall each one separately but I was trying to find something like what I had. Someone on stackoverflow said something about using a file called pkgs2rm but he used xargs which I am not familiar with. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/71042853/how-to-remove-apps-from-samsung-phone-by-pushing-file-with-package-names-with-ad – ajarrow Feb 09 '22 at 14:42
  • Why not accept the challenge and learn how xargs works? BTW: Are you aware that if you uninstall the wrong package your phone may end up in a boot loop?. Therefore I would strongly recommend only to uninstall apps you exactly know what they are for like weather widgets or something like that. The rest just leave alone. – Robert Feb 09 '22 at 14:54
  • @Robert I tried looking it up and couldn't find any documentation for it. Does it even work on Windows? From what I've found its for Linux and Unix. – ajarrow Feb 09 '22 at 15:09
  • pkgs2rm (packages to removed) is a linux txt file containing package names you must create yourself com.whatsapp com.facebook.katana com.instagram.android com.zhiliaoapp.musically com.snapchat.android ... xargs is a linux core util used for one-liner (or shell scripting) when it comes to huge amount of arguments or passing arguments to commands. '<' operator redirects file content to stdin. this is purely bash/shell don't use it if you don't understand it – alecxs Feb 09 '22 at 19:23
  • On Windows, PowerShell might be an alternative. Might be helpful: Read file line by line in PowerShell – Andrew T. Feb 10 '22 at 16:55
  • Also, unrelated to the issue, but what is "a Ponderosa system"? – Andrew T. Feb 10 '22 at 16:57
  • That was just what the whole setup was called. – ajarrow Feb 10 '22 at 18:58
  • A little bit late, but before late that never. I don't know if it is exactly what you're looking for, but maybe you can use this method here https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater – SEMOGS SEMOGS Nov 10 '23 at 03:34

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