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Apps like Link2SD and Titanium Backup are able to "freeze" other apps, that is disable them without removing them. What do these apps do to achieve this?

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1 Answer

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Titanium Backup etc just use in-built Package Manager (pm) to freeze an app. pm has a feature to prevent apps from running & from appearing in Launcher. To use it, Titanium Backup etc execute following command:

pm disable {package_name}

You can freeze apps by yourself without using a dedicated freezer app. Just use the above command in Terminal Emulator or ADB Shell.

For example, if you want to freeze Stock Web Browser, open Terminal Emulator & switch to root using su command. Then, execute # pm disable com.android.browser.
It'll return #Package com.android.browser new state: disabled. Done!
Restart your Launcher (some devices may require reboot) to see the app icon gone.

To defrost the app, just replace disable with enable in the command.

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Interesting. I thought these apps use some kind of hack, like removing the reading permission from a certailn file. – Erik Oct 24 '12 at 9:18
Is this the same as the kill -STOP, kill -CONT commands described here? linuxpoison.blogspot.com/2007/11/… – NoBugs Apr 14 at 20:16
How can I tell whether an app is frozen? ps still shows the application. – NoBugs Apr 14 at 20:45
@NoBugs Reboot your device. Some devices need this to completely disable an app. And yes, this isn't kill command. – Sachin Shekhar Apr 15 at 1:08
Right. Sometimes pm disable only says "killed", then the process starts up again immediately. kill -STOP pid is better. You can see which are stopped, in ps output. – NoBugs May 2 at 14:30

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