This guide will show users who own a Samsung Galaxy S6 or Galaxy S6 Edge how to hide or remove all those apps they never used. Samsung has a number of its own pre-installed apps, and carriers in the United States often add 10 or more apps. All of this bloatware takes up valuable space and fills the application tray with unnecessary icons.
The Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge are two of the most popular Android phones available today, but because they don’t have a micro SD slot for user expandable storage and tons of pre-installed apps, many users don’t have as much space as they’d like. While we can’t remove most of them and get more storage, we can disable and hide them.
Out of the box, my Galaxy S6 had 16 pre-installed apps from AT&T excluding Amazon apps, and over 30 in total if you count Samsung’s Milk Music, TV apps, visual voicemail, and everything else. These all appear in the app tray, taking up space as I will never use any of them. For users who want to get rid of Verizon Navigator, Sprint ID Zone, Nascar apps, T-Mobile TV and everything else carriers and Samsung have added, read on for quick how-to instructions.
Some carriers or Samsung apps are actually extremely useful, so we will choose the ones we want to uninstall ourselves. As long as you don’t like football, things like Verizon’s NFL Mobile definitely work. The Samsung Theme app lets you change the look and feel of your entire device, so some users may want to let it go.
Then there are apps like Samsung Milk Music that don’t hold a candle to Google Play Music, so I disable and uninstall that too. All carriers in the US are bloating these phones with worthless apps that often do nothing but waste space. Sure some owners use a few of these, but most likely they all just sit there, never opened or accessed.
Fortunately on Android 4.4 and above these can actually be disabled and hidden from the app store, which turns them off so they don’t use up battery life as well. They cannot be removed or removed to reclaim storage, but disabling them is extremely easy and only takes a few minutes.
Instructions
I personally disabled 28 apps from AT&T on my Samsung Galaxy S6 to free up space in the app tray and clean up my device. Every user will have different needs and preferences, and the instructions below explain where to go to disable these apps and where to be so you can easily re-enable them if needed.
Start by going to settings by pulling down the notification bar and tapping the gear-shaped icon in the top right, or by locating the settings in the app tray. The easiest way from here is to simply tap “search” and type “apps”. Actually, that’s where we’re going.
In the “All” tab, users will see every app installed on the Galaxy S6. Scroll through the list until you find something like Samsung Milk Music or AT&T Mail, tap to select and there are multiple options. We can’t uninstall it and force stop will only temporarily close the app. Instead, select the “disable” button in the middle right, as shown in the screenshot above.
Users receive a warning that disabling apps may prevent some services or features from working properly, so be sure to only disable things you never use. If something doesn’t work afterwards, you can always follow the same steps above and hit “activate” to reactivate the app; returns to the application tray and works as it should.
I went ahead and completely disabled 28 apps on my Samsung Galaxy S6. Most of these are AT&T apps, a few made by Amazon and later by Samsung, a series of apps I’ve never used. This takes just a few taps on the apps tab under settings and you’re done. Now when users go to the app tray they are all missing and only the apps that are actually used and wanted will be visible.
This action will clear apps from free space, make the owners more productive as there are not many apps in the app tray and help clean everything up.
