How to Remove Bloatware on Galaxy S4 (All Models)

I have been using Samsung Galaxy devices for years now. I still feel nostalgic about my first Android phone the Galaxy Spica which had nominal bloats. Through all those years, I have always been in love with Samsung devices despite their plasticky and cheap build quality with big price tags. I love to have a card slot on my phones to expand the memory, removable battery and the features that come with Samsung devices. In this article, I’ll be describing the easiest way to remove bloatware on Galaxy S4.

However, there are a few things about all Samsung Galaxy devices that I hate. With the launch of every new Galaxy, I have wished that Samsung would surely remove those issues but the Korean OEM has always disappointed us in this regard. Can you guess a few such things apart from the build quality that really sucks all who own a Galaxy device? Just think a little and you can easily figure them out. Here are they:

1. Lag delays while opening apps, especially the Phone and Contacts apps
2. Terrible theming of the user interface.
3. Over-stuffing of the device with bloatware that devours RAM and battery and makes the phone poorly slow.

There is no use of those “revolutionary” giant processors and lavish RAM if your phone cannot perform faster! Sadly, Samsung has been forcing the users to live with a good number of useless apps in the name of new features that are practically useless. Most of us do not want them to crowd the app drawer unnecessarily and degrade the quality of performance.

Samsung’s latest flagship the Galaxy S4 is no exception to the company’s age-old tradition. It comes with about three pages of system apps most of which are not likely to be used by S4 users. There might be a difference in opinion about the bloat quality of a couple of apps but most of them are really useless.

Similar Articles that You Must Read

At DroidViews we often come with tutorials on improving performance of the Samsung Galaxy devices. We already have a bunch of articles on removing and disposing of bloatware apps. You can read them by clicking the links below:

• Easily Remove Bloatware from Your Android Phone without Rooting
• List of Bloats on Samsung Galaxy Devices that Can be Safely Removed
• Boost Performance and Reduce Lag-Delays on  Android Phones
• Reduce Lag and Enjoy Faster TouchWiz on Your Samsung Galaxy Device

Root Required to Delete Bloats

If you are not happy with your Galaxy S4 with a populated app drawer and slow performance, you should consider removing the apps and widgets that you normally do not need or use. You need to root an Android device to be able to delete the bloats using an app or a root file manager. A user with a rooted S4 might get rid of those system apps manually or by installing a custom ROM, but those who wish to do it easily without hassles can use this script to clean the bloats!

Warning!

Please note that once deleted, the bloat apps cannot be restored back. The only way to get them back is to reflash an original stock ROM or wait for the next OTA update, that may provide them again in the new ROM. But even this is not guaranteed. Therefore, you should be careful while choosing the apps to be deleted. In case you have a rooted Galaxy S4, you should backup/copy the apps to the external SD, and even your computer, before running the script.

Compatibility

A rooted Galaxy S4 with stock/official, or Samsung’s TouchWiz based custom firmware.

Truly Clean Script Does it All

All props to schoolsux from XDA for preparing a script called “Truly Clean” that can remove all unwanted system apps without wasting time, losing warranty through rooting and with great ease. All you need to do is to just install the script and you get a Galaxy S4 with just one page of apps instead of three.

The script, in its original state, can remove about 100 apps from your Samsung Galaxy S4 and thus you get more than 500MB extra space on the internal SD. This can make a great difference in phone’s performance and battery life.

The above screenshot shows the apps that would survive after the bloat kill script runs on your Galaxy S4. If you do not want that a specific app is removed from your phone, you can edit the Truly Clean script with the help of  NotePad++ program.

How to Remove Bloatware on Galaxy S4

1. Download the TrulyClean script file in zip meant for your Galaxy S4’s model and copy it to the external SD Card on your phone.
2. Turn off your phone and boot it into Recovery mode: press Volume Up + Home + Power buttons at the same time till Samsung logo blinks for 2 times. When you see the green Android bot, release the power button and keep Volume Up and Home pressed till you enter the Recovery mode.
3. In Recovery, use the volume keys to navigate and the Power button to select options.
4. Scroll to “install zip from sdcard” and select the TrulyClean zip file.
5. Confirm your installation and wait till it is finished.
6. Then go back to the main menu and select “reboot system now”.

How to Edit the List of Apps to be Removed

As I mentioned above, a certain app that is useless for someone might be useful to someone else. If you want to add or remove an app from the list of the TrulyClean script, you can do it very easily.

1. Download and install Notepad++ on your computer: Download
2. Download the zip file (do not unzip) and double click it with the mouse.
3. Doing this will show you the contents of the zip. Now right-click on the “updater-script” file and select “Open with…”.
4. Now select Notepad++ from the suggested programs for opening the file.
5. The updater-script will open now in a new window and here you can edit the list of apps. You can add or remove an app by adding a new line in the script with the name of the app you want to delete, or by deleting the line that contains the name of the app you wish to keep.
6. For example, if you want to keep the Galaxy S4 AccuWeather app on your phone, just delete the line number 42 (see the screenshot above) that has the corresponding entry.
7. When you have edited the “updater-script”, do not forget to save the changes. Then close the Notepad++window and copy the zip to phone. The rest has already been described above.

Enjoy your completely cleaned phone with no bloats and removed undesirable system apps. Having killed those apps, you will experience the difference in the speed of your phone’s performance and improved battery life. Cheers!

Remove Bloatware on Galaxy S4

If you have root access on your Samsung Galaxy S4, you can easily and safely uninstall bloatware/system apps from your device using a root uninstaller app from the Google Play Store. A good thing about using this method is, it also creates a backup of the uninstalled apps so that you might restore them later if required.

[googleplay url=”https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jumobile.manager.systemapp”] [googleplay url=”https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mobi.infolife.uninstaller”]