This guide will explain how to sleep and disable apps on the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ and will review the benefits of disabling them. Both phones come with a number of Samsung, carrier, and even Amazon apps pre-installed, which are often space-wasting and rarely used.
There are many reasons why you might want to do this. When you disable an app, it no longer appears on the phone or in the app tray, which is a quick way to clean your phone. Additionally, you may want to uninstall an app to put certain apps to sleep while at work to save space or avoid interruptions.
Samsung actually offers three different methods to manage apps on the Galaxy S8. We can uninstall some, disable everything pre-installed, and put apps to sleep to prevent them from using up battery life in the background.
The reason most users choose to disable apps is to remove bloatware. What is bloatware? Preloaded on your phone are dozens of Amazon, Samsung, Verizon, T-Mobile, NASCAR and Lookout Mobile security apps.
How to Disable Apps on Galaxy S8
There are actually two different ways to disable apps on Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+. The first is to go to the apps tab in settings and manually disable each app you want to get rid of. Here are step-by-step instructions.
Once you disable an app, it will no longer appear anywhere on the phone. We recommend that you use caution and only disable apps that you know won’t cause problems by uninstalling. I disabled everything from Amazon, AT&T, AT&T Data Usage Manager, Lookout Mobile Security, PDF Write and a few others. My Galaxy S8 had a total of 13 apps.
The second method is even faster, but you won’t see them all in a list format like our instructions above. Just press and hold any icon on the home screen or the app tray. From here a small popup will appear with options and controls. You can select multiple apps at once, remove shortcuts from the home screen, or put that app to sleep and disable it. If you only need to quickly disable one or two apps, this is the best way to go.
Long press the app icon, tap disable and hit confirm or OK. It will disappear from the application tray and will be disabled forever. You can go to Settings > Apps > find that app and re-enable it at any time if you want to restore it.
How to Sleep Apps on Galaxy S8
Another option for Galaxy S8 owners is to put apps to sleep. Putting an app to sleep prevents it from using battery life in the background. This is useful if an app is malfunctioning or if you know an app is using more battery than it should. A good example of this is Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.
Note that sleeping apps may not receive updates or send you notifications for incoming messages until you wake them up again.
Press and hold any app icon on the home screen or in the app tray as mentioned earlier. If the app can be put to sleep, you will see “Sleep” listed in the dropdown options. Release the screen and select sleep, read the warning that you will miss notifications and press OK to put it to sleep.
Now this app will be closed temporarily and will not use battery life. When you’re ready, tap the app icon again to wake it up. The application will wake up and return to full functionality.
In some cases, all that is required is to put an app to sleep. However, in other cases, it may be in users’ interest to follow our instructions above and disable apps and bloatware entirely. While you’re here, check out these awesome Galaxy S8+ cases.
