How to Remove Pre-Installed Apps from a Samsung Galaxy S III

by Brian D'Alessandro

A brand new Samsung Galaxy S III comes with a number of built-in stock apps that some call "bloatware." If you never plan on using any of these pre-installed apps, then they just take up space and clutter up your Apps menu.
Since the apps come installed with the phone, you can’t actually uninstall them like you can for apps you personally download. But there are ways to either disable the apps or hide them.

  1. Go to Settings, then Application Manager. Swipe left through the 'Downloaded' and 'Running' tabs to get to the 'All' section.

  2. Inside the 'All' tab, scroll down to the stock app you want to disable. Click on it, and then click the Disable button in the top right. If you do not see the word Disable, but you see 'Uninstall Updates' then click that instead. Afterwards the Disable button will appear. If you want to undo what you disabled, you can find the disabled apps at the very bottom of the list in the 'All' tab. Disable these at your own risk, but these are the ones I disabled:

    AllShare Play: unnecessary
    ChatOn: seems to replicate functions the phone does anyway
    Game Hub: seems like mostly kids games & I can get games from Google play anyways
    Google +: I don’t need it.
    Media Hub: I don’t plan on purchasing through Samsung’s app
    Music Hub: Ditto.
    S Suggest: why not just use Google Play?
    Samsung Apps: I don’t see a reason not to just use Google play
    Talk: I might as well just text

Some of the stock apps cannot be disabled (the Disable button will be greyed out). In that case, there is still a way to remove the app icon from the app menu.

  1. Once in the apps menu, hit the Menu button. Click Hide Applications. This will place check boxes on each icon so that you can select which ones to hide. If you ever want to undo what you hid, there will be a new option in after you hit the Menu button called 'Show hidden applications.' These are the apps I had to hide this way since I couldn’t disable them:

    More Services: it just seems to link to the Samsung Apps
    VPN Client: I don’t currently need it, so I might as well disable it

I decided to leave a few of the stock apps for now in case I use them, such as Play Books, Play Magazines, Play Movies & TV, and Play Music. However, they can be disabled just as easily.

5 comments

  • Craig in Portland says:

    You didn't remove ANYTHING. You merely disabled apps.

    1
  • Chronia says:

    How do you disable apps where the "turn off" button is grayed out without rooting? The AllshareCast Dongle S/W Update app is annoying and it keeps asking me to update it in google play because a) it isn't listed as AllshareCast Dongle S/W Update in the all programs list, b) anything with All share in it's name that IS listed in the program list has the "turn off" option (or as you are listing it the disable option) grayed out and can't be used. How do I get rid of it? Also what are the app names of the live wall papers News wall and stock wall so I can disable them as well? They do not appear to be listed under all apps as what they come up as in the set live wallpaper dialogue.

    2
  • Victoria Tian says:

    Please help my soft ware samaung is not working. And no phone shop can repre it for me, and i dont want to loose my photos. Thank you.
    Regardl Victoria Tian.

    3
  • Sarah says:

    Thank you, I did not know how to do this, so I am grateful for the info !
    Regards, Sarah

    4
  • Michele Andre says:

    Samsung allshare cast dongle keeps automatically reinstalling everytime I try and uninstall it?

    5

Comments are closed.