Apps in your Android phone can use a good share of resources and if too many apps are operating at the same time it can lead to some performance or battery issues. This is why, it can be important to only running apps that you actually use and others should be deleted or otherwise disabled (when removing them isn’t an option).
It is quite easy to uninstall Android Market apps which you don’t plan to use, but what about apps from OEMs and mobile carriers? Did you notice that there is no Uninstall/delete button on these apps? They are just in your phone and could be feeding on resources while you can’t seem to anything about it.
There is a good chance that you don’t use most or all of the apps installed by your wireless carrier or OEM. If you can’t delete them, you can at least Disable them so they won’t be able to slow down your phone.
Some of you who Rooted your android phone user must be thinking “just root your phone and get rid of all the junk”, but there are many Android users who don’t actually want to root their phone. “Disabling” apps is perfect for those users who want to run their phones in an optimum way, by disabling unused apps (commonly referred as “Bloatware”).
Disabling Android Apps
The process is actually quite simple and you won’t be losing anything [although you need to be careful while choosing the app to be disabled (more on this later)]. When you disable an app, it will still stay in your phone but will not be launched during the initial start up, so you can easily enable it again if you need to. In the end, it’s a good way to optimize your phone without potential dire consequences associated with Rooting the phone.
Note: In this tutorial, we will be using Samsung Galaxy Core 2 running Android KitKat 4.4.2. We will Disable “Google Text-to-speech Engine” which cannot be deleted (it’s just an example, although the app is quite useful). The process should be same on almost all android device, but the names of options may vary.
To disable any app on your android phone, you will first have to go to Settings and tap on Application manager.
Once there you will see different options at the top such as Downloaded, Running and All. You need to swipe to All so you would be able to see all the apps you have on your phone. Just swipe left until you reach All.
There you can just search for apps that you don’t want to use. Let’s say you like reading things by yourself and don’t want to use Google Text-to-speech app. You can just tap on Google Text-to-speech and open all its details. There you will see the options of Force stop, Uninstall Updates and Turn off/Disable, tap on Turn off/Disable.
When you will tap on Turn off/Disable you will see a warning/notice saying “Turning off a built-in app may cause problems with other apps. Your data will also be deleted” just tap OK. In some phones, another warning/notice will pop up saying “The application will be replaced with the factory version” tap on Uninstall on this pop up notice and the app will be uninstalled.
Precaution: Now, the warnings you see before disabling the app are not there just to scare you, they are actually real. So before disabling any app make sure it is not directly or indirectly affecting any apps that you might use. This app is a service that is potentially used by other apps as well, so there may be ripple effects.
Enabling Android Apps
Like we have mentioned before, these apps are not deleted, you can enable them anytime you like if you change your mind. To enable the app again, just go into the details of that specific app again using the process above and tap on Turn on/enable and it will be ready to use again without going through any processes.
Preventing unused apps from loading and running is a good way to make sure that no unwanted resource hogging will happen behind your back, and if you can get it for free, all the better. Do your phone a favor and get rid of apps that you will never use. If there are any questions or you need to learn about any app which you are thinking of disabling, just ask in the comments below.