Summary
As a reviewer, my three eSIMs fly in and out of review units throughout the year. That said, I always buy an iPhone and Android phone for personal use. For the foreseeable future, that Android phone is the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8. I took advantage of a fantastic carrier deal that locks me into keeping the Galaxy Z Fold 8 for the next three years, and I’m completely fine with that. But before this Samsung foldable becomes my daily driver, I need to clean up One UI 9. One UI 9 is loaded with pre-installed Samsung, Google, and system apps — and not all of them belong on your phone. Since I bought my Galaxy phone from a carrier, I have a few extra apps to uninstall. I found the unnecessary apps hogging up the most space on my phone, and decided which ones to keep. Now, One UI is finally clean. System apps: 6 apps, 9.15GB saved If you don’t use AI, these apps are safe to remove I started with system apps, which are the ones you won’t find on your home screen. Luckily, it’s easy to sniff out the system apps taking up the most space on your Galaxy phone in the Settings app. Navigate to Settings → Apps, and tap the three-button menu. Then, press Filter and sort. Flip the toggle beside Show system apps, and hit Sort by size. The app list will show your apps in size order, from those taking up the most space to those consuming the least. Using this method, I immediately spotted system apps accounting for gigabytes of storage. Unsurprisingly, many of the largest system apps represent the local models powering the AI features on your phone. If you’re a fan of Galaxy AI or Google AI, you’ll want to keep these. For everyone else, removing them can save quite a bit of space. AI Core and the Samsung Language Core were the worst offenders, and they get larger over time. Since my phone is brand new, these system apps were relatively small. Here’s the full list of system apps I axed:
- AI Core: 3.58GB
- Samsung Language Core: 3.15GB
- Samsung Vision Model: 1.57GB
- Samsung Semantic Core: 610MB
- Samsung Pay Framework: 137MB
- Samsung Intelligence Service: 103MB Now, there were a few system apps I chose to keep. I held onto Google Play Services despite its size, because it secretly powers many of the Google features on your Android phone. Android System Intelligence is a similar story — it’s responsible for useful features behind the scenes. Scroll through the list, assess which system apps you really need, and remove the ones you don’t. Samsung apps: 16 apps, 3.3GB saved It’s time to get rid of those duplicate apps The next set of apps I combed through were the ones Samsung pre-installed on my device. In case you haven’t noticed, Samsung loads a lot of first-party apps onto Galaxy phones. Some of them are useful, like Samsung Gallery, while others are junk, like Samsung Global Goals. I tend to use Google apps over Samsung ones on my Galaxy phone, so I ditched apps like Samsung Wallet, Samsung Health, and Samsung Keyboard for their Google alternatives. Here’s the full list of Samsung apps I removed from my Galaxy Z Fold 8:
- Samsung Wallet: 660MB
- Samsung Health: 444MB
- Samsung Browser: 353MB
- Samsung Notes: 323MB
- Samsung Keyboard: 293MB
- Samsung SmartThings: 290MB
- Bixby: 152MB
- Samsung Cloud: 146MB
- Samsung Global Goals: 112MB
- Samsung Find: 107MB
- Samsung Calendar: 104MB
- Samsung Members: 99MB
- Samsung News: 97MB
- Samsung TV Plus: 66MB
- Samsung Pass: 60MB
- Galaxy Wearable: 24MB Admittedly, this list will fluctuate over time. I do use a Galaxy Watch or a pair of Galaxy Buds every now and then, and I’ll download the companion apps when I need them again. For now, I’d rather save the space by removing them from my Galaxy Z Fold 8. I left Smart Switch, which makes it easy to move data between Galaxy devices, on my Fold 8. I also kept the Galaxy Store, as it can be useful for installing Samsung apps that aren’t on the Play Store. I left apps that were small in size alone, too, as I wouldn’t reclaim much storage by uninstalling them. Google apps: 3 apps, 271MB saved Not every Google app deserves a spot on your phone Now, we’re getting to the small stuff. I didn’t touch most of the Google apps pre-installed on my Galaxy phone, as I genuinely use them. However, if you use Samsung apps more than Google apps, you might keep some of the apps I ditched in the former category and get rid of redundant Google apps. The big ones I removed here were YouTube Music and Google TV. As an Apple Music user, I have no use for these services, so their apps had to go.
- YouTube Music: 108MB
- Gemini Notebook: 86MB
- Google TV: 77MB A new pre-installed app on One UI 9 phones is Gemini Notebook. While I think it’s a neat tool, the dedicated app doesn’t belong on my phone. When I need to use it, I’ll open up the web client. Carrier apps: 4 apps, 434MB saved Bought from a carrier? You’ll have extra apps to delete If you have an unlocked device, you’re just about finished. I’m using a carrier-locked device from AT&T, so I had four carrier apps to uninstall:
- AT&T: 175MB
- ActiveArmor: 126MB
- AT&T Cloud: 78MB
- Device Help: 55MB For this article, I didn’t count the random third-party apps AT&T installed on my phone through commercial partnerships. There are too many to count, and I covered the process of removing them on my Galaxy Z Fold 7 review unit already. What about the apps you can’t uninstall? If you’ve been following along with your own Samsung device, you might have a burning question: what about the apps on my phone I can’t uninstall? Yes, there are pre-installed apps on your Galaxy phone that can’t be uninstalled — some can’t even be disabled. However, there’s a fix. You can use Android Debug Bridge, or ADB, to remove those so-called “uninstallable” apps and reclaim your phone’s storage space. That’s how I got rid of the pesky system and Samsung apps on my Galaxy Z Fold 8, and it’s how you can too. There are multiple ways to achieve that goal, and we have guides for each of them, including using ADB directly or a proxy app like Universal Android Debloater Next Generation (UAD-NG).