Uninstall system app failed using 'adb shell pm uninstall'

Question

I attempted to force uninstall in ADB, but failed:

$ adb shell pm uninstall -k org.openintents.filemanager
$ adb shell pm list packages -f | grep -i manager
package:/system/app/FileManager.apk=org.openintents.filemanager

What went wrong here? What can I do?

I used the internal application manager and there isn't an option to delete it.

Answer 1

Well, since the FileManager.apk package resides in a /system/app/ directory it is a system app. So the general way to remove it is:

adb shell
su
mount -o rw,remount /system
rm -rf /system/app/FileManager.apk
rm -rf /data/data/org.openintents.filemanager
mount -o ro,remount /system
exit
exit

Answer 2

Edit: when I saw the comment to CommonsWare answer I did not realize it was the same as the asker... anyways, a little explanation may be useful for somebody.

As yourself commented, the easiest way to uninstall a system app is plainly to delete the .apk file. The adb install / adb uninstall commands are useful for regular apps, not system apps. Since this apk is located in /system/app, adb uninstall will not remove it.

You can use the command suggested (rm /system/app/YourApp.apk), but before the /system folder need to have write access. You will need to see how to remount /system in your specific device, try searchig for "android remount +rw /system" and your device).

Alternatively, you may use any app that can do both deletion and remounting and has root access, such as Root Explorer and Astro

Answer 3

The 'Failure' problem has more to do with the adb shell appending a DOS line ending ^M (on CentOS Linux anyway). Put the list of applications to uninstall in a file and copy to the android device directly.

root@android:/root # dos2unix list-of-apps-to-uninstall.txt     
root@android:/root # for f in `cat list-of-apps-to-uninstall.txt` ; do echo $f; pm uninstall $f; done;

Answer 4

Tapemaster has made a Stack Overflow post which demonstrates the necessary trick.

Do this:

1. Install adb on your computer.

2. Root your phone.

3. Enter these commands into your computer:

adb shell
su
mount -o remount,rw /system
rm /system/app/UnwantedApp*
pm uninstall org.unwantedapp
exit
exit

The third command remounts /system read-write. The fourth command deletes the app's .apk and/or .odex files. The fifth command finishes the uninstallation.

In my experience: If you have already entered the the fourth command, then the fifth command will return Success. Otherwise, the fifth command will return Failure.

When entering the above commands, you must replace UnwantedApp with the app's real filename (without the extension), and org.unwantedapp with the app's real Java package name.