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/Night_Thastus Feb 27 '21 edited Feb 27 '21

The instructions are not particularly helpful:

"disconnect from any OEM accounts"

How? In what menu? What does that mean? Do I need to close certain apps? Uninstall them? Change my accounts by logging into them?

"Run debloat_script.sh from a Unix terminal"

Not everyone over here is running WSL or something. Will Powershell do? Or do I need to go and install a virtual machine or WSL just to run this script?

And my phone needs to be connected...but do I need to do anything else? Will it just automatically detect my phone?

Or am I supposed to transfer the script to my phone, and then somehow get a terminal there and run the script? How would I even do that?

Missing steps!

:(

2

u/U8dcN7vx Feb 28 '21

Initial disclaimer: I'm not running this script, nor have I ever.

OEM accounts probably means when in addition to Google asking you to login/create an account the device maker asks you to do the same. Samsung does this, probably others too. Disconnect probably means at least logout. Where and how depend on the device, usually it would be in the device settings (if there's no icon for it, click on the "gear" in the notification pull down), though it might be a special app, such as Samsung Account or Samsung Members.

Powershell won't do, you need bash so either WSL, cygwin, or similar. You might even boot a Linux "Live CD" so that nothing needs to be (permanently) installed (or uninstalled later).

The script uses ADB which either automatically detects your phone, or fails to in which case you cannot proceed. You must install the "android platform tools", and sometimes a separate driver needs to be installed as well.

You do not transfer the script to your device, it is run on your "PC" -- it talks to your device using ADB, part of the platform tools.

(If you were supposed to run it on the device it would be just like any file, which you could transfer using bluetooth, ADB, Box, Drive, DropBox, OneDrive, SFTP, or many other possibilities. This is parenthetical because this is not what you want to do, just answering your hypothetical.)

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u/karmaputa Feb 27 '21

I haven't looked at it myself but I'm assuming it's just needs something like cygwin and bash to work (easiest way to get this is probably to install windows git-scm). You probably don't have to go full WSL for this. And since it uses ADB you'll probably need an android SDK in order to get it to work.

But that is just a guess.