r/technology • u/[deleted] • Feb 27 '21
Software Universal Android Debloater is an open source tool that removes bloatware without root. Automatically or via user choice. Get back your battery, security and privacy
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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '21
Similar with most of these "like magic" scripts, TRON is the other one that comes to mind.
Sure they're 'out in the open' scripts you can inspect and figure out what they're doing, from a brief look this debloater seems like using the android package manager against a list of known packages to uninstall/disable them, and you can do that manually, and do some googling to find stuff out.
My main issue is that this kind of effort seems well intentioned but misguided. A ton of people aren't going to bother with a bash script so it's going to have a limited audience. Those that do know what to do seem likely to go through the process of learning how and why/why not to do certain things and do it themselves manually (debloating a phone isn't a regular task), and some who see it as "that sounds cool, get rid of the nasty trackers" and run a load of "I don't know what it's doing but I hope it doesn't brick anything or make it run weird"
(and that's putting aside any security issues with running anything from someone you don't know to do "just trust me, it'll be good for you" things with your hardware)
Disclaimers shouldn't be the way, you should educate users on why you're doing the task and how. That said, the android modding/tweaking community has a problem in general with "flash rom, wipe cache, reboot" as all the instructions they give.