Smartphones nowadays come with a lot of bloatware so in today’s tutorial I will walk you through how to disable applications on the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge.
Depending on where you buy your Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge, you can have lots of pre-installed applications on your device. Even if you bought the Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge unlocked from a retailer and not a wireless carrier, there could still be some pre-installed applications that Samsung put on your device. Samsung has a habit of duplicating a lot of the applications that Google has already created for Android.
You might also like a certain type of application from a 3rd-party developer(like a web browser app), and have no need for the default browser to be in your app drawer.
Sometimes we have the chance to completely uninstall these redundant applications and this can actually save you some storage space on your device. Sadly, some of these are pre-installed from Samsung, or even a wireless carrier, and since they’re installed on the /system partition, you simply cannot uninstall them. We can, however, disable them and as I mentioned, that will completely remove the app and its icon from the home screen and app drawer. Disabled applications can be enabled again at any point in time so there’s no need to fear that you disabled an app on the Galaxy S7 today but in 3 months you found that you actually needed it.
So don’t feel scared about not being able to use your disabled apps ever again. As long as you know where they are(and I’ll be showing you that here today), you can freely enable or disable a number of useless apps on your device.
Galaxy S7 Disable Apps
- Launch the Settings Application
- Scroll Down and Tap on the ‘Applications’ Option
- Then Tap on the ‘Application Manager’ Option
- Locate and Tap on the Application You Want to Disable
- And Then Tap on the ‘Disable’ Button
Galaxy S7 Enable Apps
- Launch the Settings Application
- Scroll Down and Tap on the ‘Applications’ Option
- Then Tap on the ‘Application Manager’ Option
- Tap the ‘All Apps’ Drop Down Menu
- Tap on the ‘Disabled’ Option
- Locate and Tap on the Application You Want to Enable
- Then Tap on the ‘Enable’ Button
Explanation
Like yesterday’s tutorial about clearing the app cache and app data on the Galaxy S7, today’s tip is also done from within Samsung’s Application Manager feature. Not many people know about this feature because it is buried under two different settings options, and that’s why I like to point it out in my tutorials. These types of features can be critical for those who own an Android smartphone or tablet so the more people who know about it the better. Once you are inside the Application Manager, you’ll want to locate and tap on the application that you want to disable.
You will probably notice that not all applications can be disabled and this is usually setup by the OEM or wireless carrier. Sometimes the functions of these apps are simply critical to your Android device and disabling them can break other features. For example, you can’t disable the stock Clock application because so many other features of the OS rely on information from that app. The same goes for the stock Calendar application as well. If the Disable button is grayed out then that means you are unable to disable that application(even if you have an alternative app installed).
You still have the option to disable a lot of apps that you will probably never use so feel free to go through this list in the Application Manager and disable(or uninstall) any app that you won’t be using. If you ever decide that you do want to use an application that you’ve previously disabled, you can still find it in this list(it’ll just be marked as disabled), but you can also tap the All Apps drop down menu and choose to only show the apps that have been disabled. From here, you can find the Galaxy S7 disabled app much more quickly and then you can enable in the same way that you disabled it. You’ll just see an Enable button where the Disable button was before.
