[Q] Removing bloatware - Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Using stock rooted ROM I wanted to remove some of the apps (most Google apps) that come with the ROM. For this purpose I use the Rom Toolbox lite app. I was able to remove the apps but everytime I go into the play store they show up as an update available.
Can anyone recommend a permanent solution to get rid of these apps that come pre-packed with the stock ROM ?

mjehan said:
Using stock rooted ROM I wanted to remove some of the apps (most Google apps) that come with the ROM. For this purpose I use the Rom Toolbox lite app. I was able to remove the apps but everytime I go into the play store they show up as an update available.
Can anyone recommend a permanent solution to get rid of these apps that come pre-packed with the stock ROM ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Use Titanium Backup to uninstall them, go to the system/apps folder and delete the APK, or you can just disable them in the Settings->Apps screen. Take your pick.

dont login to play store

kgeissler said:
Use Titanium Backup to uninstall them, go to the system/apps folder and delete the APK, or you can just disable them in the Settings->Apps screen. Take your pick.[/QUOTE
If your going to disable them in settings>app you have to uninstall any updates first then you can disable them. This feature was introduced in ICS.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

munchy_cool said:
dont login to play store
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
why?
What Google apps are safe to remove without screwing up the phone (Google play music, magazine, one time init, partner setup, search, currents)

Don't delete Google apps because you won't be able to get ota updates
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda app-developers app

BigDig said:
Don't delete Google apps because you won't be able to get ota updates
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seriously? So we're stuck with the books, magazine and current crap?

texaslittleangel said:
Seriously? So we're stuck with the books, magazine and current crap?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep! I deleted the bloatware as soon as got my N4 back in November, it was running 4.2 , when Google pushed 4.2.1 it wouldn't install so I had to flash back to stock 4.2 and lost all data and settings...
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda app-developers app

If you disable them you're fine. If you remove them and they are updated within the ota, it will fail.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda premium

All you gotta do is either push them back or copy them back with root explorer.. That's what I had to do for the update..
Sent from my Nexus 4

I know I deleted books on Monday when I got my phone but I can't remember if the ota came in before or after the deletion. I froze them with TBP for the time being but they occupy precious memory space.

No they don't. Those apps are located in /system on a different partition.
It has no effect on the space available to the user under normal circumstances. Not normal would be a root user moving files into that partition instead of their normal location.
Example would be converting a app into a system app.

albundy2010 said:
No they don't. Those apps are located in /system on a different partition.
It has no effect on the space available to the user under normal circumstances. Not normal would be a root user moving files into that partition instead of their normal location.
Example would be converting a app into a system app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Please help me understand how this phone works in terms of space then. It is supposed to be 16GB right? We get the phone and it has 12GB only (I am assuming it is because 4GB is being occupied by the system/stock rom). I installed a few apps and I now only have about 7GB left. I downloaded the system analyzer app and it tells me that TB is occupying a hell of a lot more space (due to an initial back-up I performed of apps and data) than what it was occupying on my previous phone. How do I go about loosing between 5 -6 GB of space?!?
Before removing the update of the Googlea apps and disabling them, current was up to 50MB, magazine was higher, etc...
I really do want to learn more about my phone, how best use my storage, save battery etc.
TIA guys

The phones have 16gb of nand in them.
Many things eat away at the so called 16gb. From the mb to bytes way of counting storage ( like any other drive) to the things you mentioned
The phone has a bit under 900 mb set aside for the ROM. Then there is the other stuff like radio / recovery bootloader etc that take up space / have a partition
The extra space you see being used by the apps you mentioned is just data. Currents for example downloads the stuff that you sync so it can be read offline. Its stored locally and takes up space. Same basic idea for the other apps you mentioned.
Once you update a system app also have two of the apks on the phone. One in /system/app and the other in /data/app. So the updated apk itself takes up a bit of space.
Think of it in simple computer terms. You have one 100gb hard drive that is spilt up into two partitions that you cant change ( got to pretend you can't change them for this). 20gb c partition for windows and 80gb left over for whatever. No matter how much stuff you delete off the 20gb you're not going to gain space on the 80.
In our phones all the pre installed apps would be on the 20gb. Anything that gets downloaded/cached etc would go into the 80gb.
If you need space you can free up space by clearing the caches of apps. Getting the titanium backups off the phone and onto a computer or the cloud. Converting some apps to system apps can gain you a couple hundred mb since they wouldn't be on our make believe 80gb partition anymore. Their data and cache will still end up on your regular storage but the apks won't be there...

It's all a translational from marketing to what a computer sees.
In marketing, (and everywhere else I guess based on the mathematical prefixes) they assume:
1Kb = thousand bytes
1Mb = million bytes
1Gb = billion bytes
(kilo- = 10 to the 3rd power, mega- = 10^6, giga- = 10^9)
Whereas a computer sees:
1Kb = 1024 bytes
1Mb = 1048576 bytes
1Gb = 1073741824 bytes
Now the Nexus 4 is 16 Gb = 16 billion bytes.
16 billion divided by 1073741824 = 14.901 Gb
You say before you used TB you had 12 Gigs. With 14.9 of play space, assume your rom/etc is 2.9 Gigs. After backing that up in TB, assuming there is compression, let's say 9.3 Gigs are left.
idk what apps you installed but 2 gigs is easy to kill with games, apps, music, syncing contact photos, etc. (Not to mention caches)
Heck, I install 1 game it takes up 3 gigs.

Albundy, THNAKS a million for explaining this to me. GREAT info!!!
PcFish thank you for the breakdown. No games. I've got the Advanced Task Killer app that helps clean up the cache

Related

phone running out of space?? gmail taking a while to refresh?

my N1 is saying its running out of space. anyone runnin into a space issue too? what did u do? i dont think i have that many apps installed. i uninstalled the ones i didnt really need.
when i check SD Card/Phone storage settings, says my phone's internal storage available space is 19.07mb >.< is that low....
also, for gmail syncing, is it me or does it take like a while to sync...?
If you are running a custom rom try moving large apps like Flash to your SD card. Also clear your browser cache. Deleteing old sms's will help also.
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
no custom rom. stock 2.2.1. moved what i can to SD. 32.75mb now =3
did you try removing browser cache?
removing browser cache was what increased it to 30 something mb =3 lol
is there any way to save text messages =3
Try this out for backing up SMS: code.google.com/p/android-sms/ (I can't post live links yet.)
SMS Backup & Restore from the Market
does it get saved on the sd or on the phone?
20mb is the limit for the low space warning.
removed some some unused apps again. now at avail space 48.70mb. is that good? what does everyone else have?
did the backup thing... went thru my 17k+ msgs since i got phone in august. xD
Everyone else mostly has custom ROMs with Apps2EXT, which equals pretty much unlimited space for apps.
???? apps2ext??
I hover around 25mb-30mb free space usually. I also have a bunch of games I could uninstall since I only every play maybe 3 of them.
Every time I got the low space warning it was from having way too many windows going in the browser.
Sent from my T-Mobile G2 using XDA App
i close em tho =3
iandroo888 said:
???? apps2ext??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
[Sigh] Search is your friend...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=715940
clear cache.. browser usually has 5mb or more.
move apps to SD; froyo style.
Hope that helps.
moved all i could over to sd. uninstalled whatever apps i could. cleared cache.

after rooting and moving all apps to sd why internal memory only 80 mb left

hey guys
I know that this has been asked many times, but what am I missing here, I rooted my play, moved all the apps via titanium to my sd card and I am left with only 80 mb.
I have about 240 apps installed
the biggest apps are 10 of gameloft games and IGO
1- what can I delete to increase internal memory
2- another question when I download apps from the market do apks get stored in the internal memory.
I am really confused about whats the use of moving to sd card if I will only have about 80 mb left in the internal memory.
This means I should start deleting apps, what a bummber as there are many more apps I wanna install
Try clearing caches.
After root I use an app called cache mate for root users.
It freed up a good 40mb for me on its 1st run.
i already did use cache mate
any other suggestions please?
Every app that you install left something on the internal mem, to use stuff like widgets etc, so if you cant live with 80mb (my nexus one is always with around 20mb) you will have to uninstall some of the apps, specially the ones that cant be moved to the SD...
The problem is that there is only one app that is left in the internal memory now and still only 80 mg.
Sent from my R800i using XDA Premium App
hykhleif said:
The problem is that there is only one app that is left in the internal memory now and still only 80 mg.
Sent from my R800i using XDA Premium App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well, perhpads i was not clear enough on my previous post...
no matter if you move all apps to SD, still, each app left a piece of it on the internal mem, if you have 240 apps, and each of them leaves 1mb, then you have 240mb used...
If you want some free mem, the best choice will be to get rid of some of the 240 apps, normally i dont use more than 10 and a couple of games...check what you have installed, probably half of them are junk...
This is what happens when you get a new device & download the world!
DeadlyDazza said:
This is what happens when you get a new device & download the world!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
exactly!! like i said probably half are junk

[Q] Install apps on ext sd

Hello,
Is there any way that I can install apps directly on the external storage card? and how?
The problem is I am using Navdroyd and Copliot with all their maps that take a lot of space on the interanl storage card.
Any adice?
Thanks
Airey toi inssist, anyons can help please
Any1???
How can i force to install app on SD????
Nope, honeycomb doesnt support apps2sd function.
But one way you could free up some space (about 300mb, varys on each rom) is by converting user apps to system apps in titanium backup. This will take up a lot of unused rom space and free up internal storage space.
When you open up titanium backup, on the very bottom it tells you how much free rom space you have.
jon-.- said:
Nope, honeycomb doesnt support apps2sd function.
But one way you could free up some space (about 300mb, varys on each rom) is by converting user apps to system apps in titanium backup. This will take up a lot of unused rom space and free up internal storage space.
When you open up titanium backup, on the very bottom it tells you how much free rom space you have.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanx Man.
I am using Link2SD from the market. It is a little difficult to get all set up but once you do it works great.
jon-.- said:
Nope, honeycomb doesnt support apps2sd function.
But one way you could free up some space (about 300mb, varys on each rom) is by converting user apps to system apps in titanium backup. This will take up a lot of unused rom space and free up internal storage space.
When you open up titanium backup, on the very bottom it tells you how much free rom space you have.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Keep in mind when you update your ROM (custom or OTA), it'll wipe any applications you converted to system apps. Since they will then be located in /system/apps.
JdgM3NT4L said:
I am using Link2SD from the market. It is a little difficult to get all set up but once you do it works great.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How do I set up links2sd?
I should go back and edit each incident where I mention Link2SD and change the recommendation. I might mention it again. But I can't recommend it anymore. It does work, but the performance cost was terrible after a short time.
Anyway, all that I did was to follow the direction at the apps market page to a 't'. I would suggest that if you decide to give it a go. Consider leaving the app control to manual, and be selective about which apps you want to move to sd. When I only had a few apps moved it seemed ok. Once the list became more populated my tab started being very slow with quite a few errors and even lockups. To top it off reversing the process was an awful mess. I ended up having to wipe my tab to get it back to normal.
The sad part to me is that I can almost fill up my 16gb tab with the just the games that I own. No way I can install them all and have room for much else. Funny, that's the whole reason I wanted a tablet with external storage. I kinda think that the sd card feature was completely misrepresented.

Something's not right here... what's using up all this space?

I deleted all my music, ISOs, and movies, because I was running out of space. After I deleted it all it showed:
​
Saying 6.48GB (13.2GB-6.72GB) is being used.
There's no way I have 6.5GB worth of stuff on my tablet... so I Ctrl+A, Right Click, Properties:
​
That shows 471MB... so um... what's going on with the rest of ~6GB?
*EDIT*
Went through settings and checked out the internal storage:
​
What?
That doesn't match my PC readings at all. And in fact, the math doesn't work either:
1.13 + 1.75 + 6.29 = 9.17GB
13.24GB - 9.17GB = 4.07GB.
Where's that 4.07GB, according to the tablet?
(click the images for a bigger version)
did you download the transformers movie? that uses up about 2gb... to delete i had to go into play movies app, manage space and delete from there
Printerscape said:
I deleted all my music, ISOs, and movies, because I was running out of space. After I deleted it all it showed:
​
Saying 6.48GB (13.2GB-6.72GB) is being used.
There's no way I have 6.5GB worth of stuff on my tablet... so I Ctrl+A, Right Click, Properties:
​
That shows 471MB... so um... what's going on with the rest of ~6GB?
(click the images for a bigger version)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
micks_address said:
did you download the transformers movie? that uses up about 2gb... to delete i had to go into play movies app, manage space and delete from there
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I checked just now, and nope.
I'm aware that the Nexus 7 uses the internal memory for apps as well, but there's no way I have ~6GB worth of apps installed... that must be several thousands of apps (note that app data are installed on the 'SD Card', so it shows up in the /data).
After your, 'CTRL+A' and right click properties how long did you wait to get your value?
Go away for 5mins leaving it running and you will probably find it has changed sum what, you find it does stick for 30secs or so at times.
I had to switch my Nexus off then back on before the storage space updated when id deleted a few things.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk 2
I don;t supposed you know what the free space was reported as when you first got your nexus 7 ? If there is something hinky, then it may have been misreporting fr omthe get go.
All I suggest is backup everything you want to keep and then factory reset your Android. Run through config and see what it reports used and free as. If it's still wrong, then return your tablet.
Oh - are you using a custom rom? If so, that could be the cause.
---------- Post added at 10:43 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:41 AM ----------
Dazzh82 said:
I had to switch my Nexus off then back on before the storage space updated when id deleted a few things.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah thats because the MediaStorage (or MediaStore or something like that) service / task takes a while to update sometimes. Waiting normally results in an update, but a reboot will always do the trick.
MTP is pretty buggy. It doesn't show every file or folder that's currently on the device through Windows Explorer. Hoping Google will acknowledge and fix it soon, or even better - bring back USB Mass Storage.
you will also find that windows does not indicate the free space on a drive gained by deleting files until the recycle bin has been emptied, this is because the files arent cleared from the drive until you do this. did you empty the bin before checking the free space?
MTP is buggy.
I recommend downloading ES File Explorer and add ur desktop to local server, and send the files through the network.
also, ESFE has an SD card analyst that can check what's using up ur space.
If you are rooted and have made any Clockworkmod backups, they take up a healthy amount of storage
Dazzh82 said:
I had to switch my Nexus off then back on before the storage space updated when id deleted a few things.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
uberNoobZA said:
Yeah thats because the MediaStorage (or MediaStore or something like that) service / task takes a while to update sometimes. Waiting normally results in an update, but a reboot will always do the trick.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Rebooted my tablet and it now says about 9GB of free space.
Thanks
micks_address said:
did you download the transformers movie? that uses up about 2gb... to delete i had to go into play movies app, manage space and delete from there
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
are you sure the movie is downloaded to the tablet or streaming off gplay?
I have similar problem
Printerscape said:
Rebooted my tablet and it now says about 9GB of free space.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Deleted movies do not release space, until a reboot. Is there any method to make it release space without a reboot? Now it makes the use very inconvenient. Thanks.

Continually "insufficient storage"

I have a rooted S5 w/ 16GB of internal storage, but I'm rarely able to update/download new apps. I have to scrounge for apps to delete for a half hour just to get it to let me download a new app or update an app. I have moved just about all the apps I can to the SD card (32GB, less than half used).
In the storage screen it says I have used 14.88GB in apps, and <20MB in everything else with "Free space" around 400-500MB. I usually have to get it to mid 500s before it will let me do anything on it. To make matters worse, somehow the apps I uninstall keep reinstalling themselves.
My problem seems to be this big "Applications" thing - which isn't right. I have some large apps, but they keep all their data on the SD card (like podcasts with PocketCasts). On my applications manager, from top down in size - facebook @ 190MB, google play services at 156MB, google app at 134MB... dropping off fairly quickly after that, so no way its 15GB worth.
What am I missing? Do others constantly have this problem? It is getting ridiculous! No reason that I can see that there should be a big bunch of stuff that is counted as used when it isn't.
Some things I've tried:
I heard about something the dumpstate/logcat, I cleared it but nothing got better
I used adb to set the default install location to the external SD card (I forget the exact command), as far as I can tell it is still trying to install in the internal SD card.
Any suggestions or more information needed?
EDIT:
More information thanks to DiskUsage (forgot I can download APKs - which install fine). It shows my internal SD card breakdown as 10796MB overall, 2612MB app data, 7815MB "System data", and 340MB free space (plus some other misc. that makes up the difference). I don't have a great understanding of how this is partitioned, but I'd imagine the ~16GB has 5GB off limits for ROM stuff? Then what is taking up nearly 8GB as "System data"? Is this normal?
EDIT 2:
Looks like it was creating duplicates in data/app (on a lot of phones I think this is data/app-lib). I used root explorer to purge the duplicates, and now have nearly 3GB free instead of a couple hundred MB!
I have the same problems but I use DiskUsage from the Play Store. Most of the time it's my cache for the download manager has several gigs of wasted space. Clearing cache fixes it for me.
Eodmule said:
I have the same problems but I use DiskUsage from the Play Store. Most of the time it's my cache for the download manager has several gigs of wasted space. Clearing cache fixes it for me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll check that out the next time I am able to install an app but I should mention I also tap the "cached data" in the storage manager thing (in settings). Usually doesn't work I also use CleanMaster, which seems like it works, some times.
EDIT: Just checked it out, that's awesome! I have been looking for this kind of app, I use WinDirStat on windows that does something similar.
mrzeus7 said:
EDIT: Just checked it out, that's awesome! I have been looking for this kind of app, I use WinDirStat on windows that does something similar.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I use WinDirStat also. I really like the visual presentation of both.
Here ya go. You can try this.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=66304384
?If anyone helps, plz give thanks?
G900V ? BL w/TWRP

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