Google, in general, does a good job of keeping bloatware off it’s Google Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro and other Google Pixels smartphones as long as you do not consider Google’s applications bloated. The company is happy to ensure you have its calendar, web browser, navigation maps, photos app and more at the front and centre when you begin using the device.
However, only some people want these pre-installed apps on their smartphones. So, in this article, we will show you how you can disable or uninstall these first-party system apps from the Google Pixel 7 and the Pixel 7 Pro. We will show you two methods in this guide.
Method 1: Disabling Google Pixel 7 apps from settings
The first method is the easiest and it involves disabling the applications you do not want running in the background. To do this, you can find the icon for the app that you want to disable and perform a long press gesture on it.
- So, if, for example, you do not want the Google Chrome browser active on our Google Pixel 7 smartphone, you can bring up the app info page by making a long press gesture on the app icon and then tapping the little “i” icon right there.
- You can also find this page by opening up the settings app, selecting the apps option, and then finding the Chrome browser on the list of apps there.
- Now, tap the disable button from the app info page and confirm that you really do not want this application running on your device. Selecting the disable app button right there will not only remove all of the application’s data but will also prevent it from running in the background as a service.
As this is the easiest method of getting rid of pre-installed apps, this is the first thing that we recommend people do for applications that they don’t want running on their Google Pixel 7 or the Pixel 7 Pro.
Limitations
But sadly, you aren’t given this disable option for all of the pre-installed bloatware apps on your device. So, the second method we recommend is using ADB and Fastboot tools to uninstall the system apps for the default user.
Methods 2: Using ADB and Fastboot tools
This method is a bit more complex but still relatively easy to do. You can see that the disable button is greyed out for the Google Messages app if you try to disable it by using Method 1. But if you are happy with using a third-party solution for this, then it should not hurt your phone to remove it if you do not want it on your device.
Before uninstalling it from the default user account, you must install ADB and fastboot tools on a desktop or laptop computer. Also, you need to enable USB debugging mode on your Google Pixel 7 or the Pixel 7 Pro from the developer options.
- Enabling USB debugging is compulsory so that your phone can properly connect to the PC through a USB cable, on doing so ADB commands can run without any errors.
- For this method, you also need to install an “APK analyzer” application from the Google Play Store. This application will tell you the package name for the apps on your phone.
- After installing the app, open the app on your device and find the package name of the application you want to uninstall. This example is the Google messages app and we can see that the package name is “com.Google.Android.apps.messaging“.
- Once you have all that set up, you need to open up a command prompt, a Windows Powershell, or a terminal window in the same folder as ADB and fastboot tools. Also, you need to connect your Google Pixel 7 or the Pixel 7 Pro to your PC using a USB cable.
- Once you have opened the command prompt within the same folder as your ADB and fastboot tool, type the command ADB Shell and hit enter to see whether your device is connected correctly or not.
- If everything is set up correctly, type the command pm uninstall -k –user 0 [package name].
- In the package name, type the package name of the app that you want to uninstall. You can get the package name from the APK Analyzer App you install on your smartphone.
- You can then press enter on the keyboard and if everything is done correctly, you should see a success message appear on the command prompt.
You can look back at the phone after seeing that message to confirm that the application icon is no longer there. You can even go into the settings application and look for the app on the same application list to check and make sure that this application is no longer installed on your device.
You should see a message like this, “the application has been uninstalled for your default user account, cannot run, and will not be allowed to run in the background”.
Conclusion
So, in this article, we have detailed two ways to get rid of pre-installed bloatware system apps on the Google Pixel 7 and the Pixel 7 Pro smartphones. This process will also work with last year’s Pixel 6 series and it will even work on the upcoming mid-range Google smartphone, which will likely be called the Pixel 7A.
Reinstallation
Suppose you ever need to reinstall the apps that you just removed from your Pixel device today or now. In that case, you can enable them again from the app info page we showed you in the settings app, or you can install an existing command using ADB to reinstall those for the default user account.
Experiencing difficulties with your Device, check out our “How To” page on how to resolve some of these issues.
