Uninstall the native Facebook application preinstalled on your Samsung Galaxy S8 or S9 in a few clicks.
With the many problems faced by Facebook in its management of private data, more and more users are seeking to detach themselves from the social network to protect their privacy and limit the use of their personal data by the American platform.
However, more and more manufacturers are entering into commercial agreements with large groups to embed applications on their smartphones. This is particularly the case of Samsung which pre-installs natively on several of its devices, Facebook. Bloomberg reported the story of a user complaining that they couldn’t find a solution to remove the app from their device. This is because Samsung seems to be deliberately preventing the ability to delete the app. At best, the application can be “deactivated”, which would have, a priori, the same effect as deleting it according to a representative of Facebook.
Not enough to reassure the suspicious user when it is known that Facebook is watching you, whether you have an account or not.
However, there is a solution to uninstall the application from your device. It requires rolling up your sleeves and proceeding with care, but is nothing impossible for those most determined to get rid of the social network.
1. Download Android SDK Platform Tools
To remove Facebook from your Samsung Galaxy S8 or S9, you will first need to download Android SDK Platform Tools. This component of the Android SDK, in principle reserved for developers, includes tools capable of interfacing with the Android platform of your smartphone. The Android Debug Bridge, also called ADB, is one of them and is presented as a command line tool capable of communicating with your terminal.
Download Android SDK for Windows (Free)
Download Android SDK for macOS (Free)
Download Android SDK for Linux (Free)
Once the file is downloaded, unzip it and place the directory platform-tools it contains, at the root of the Users directory of your computer (C: Users YourUsername).
2. Identify the Facebook packages
To identify the Facebook packages present on your device, download the App Inspector app. The app lists all third-party apps, system apps, and apps preinstalled on your device.
Download App Inspector for Android (Free)
Open App Inspector and scroll through the list of packages until you reach those dedicated to the Facebook components present on the device. Enter the detailed sheet for each package, and note the name of the package (Package Name).
On our Galaxy S9, four packages are present:
- com.facebook.katana
- com.facebook.system
- com.facebook.appmanager
- com.facebook.services
3. Activate developer mode on the smartphone
Before you can delete Facebook, you will also need to enable Developer Mode on your smartphone. To do this, open Settings, enter About phone and then Software info.
Locate the Version number line and tap it seven times. A message should inform you that developer mode has been enabled.
4. Enable USB debugging
Go back to the root of your smartphone’s Settings and scroll through all the options. A new line should be visible: Development options. Enter the menu, scroll through the options until you reach the section dedicated to Debugging and enable USB Debugging.
5. Open the command prompt
On your computer, open the command prompt. On Windows, you can use the Windows + R shortcut, then in the Run window that appears, type cmd and press Enter.
6. Go to the correct directory
By default, the command prompt opens to run a command with items stored in the root of the Users directory on your machine: C: Users YourUsername>
To perform your manipulation, you will need to work with the tools contained in the platform-tools directory that you unzipped in the first step.
To work in this directory, type cd platform-tools and confirm by tapping on Enter. The command prompt should show a new working path that looks like:
C: Users YourUsername platform-tools>
7. Discover your device
It is now a matter of connecting to your smartphone from the command prompt in order to be able to send it instructions that will be executed on the device. To do this, type adb devices and validate by pressing Enter.
An alert asking you to allow USB debugging should appear on your smartphone. Press OK to validate the authorization.
Once the connection between the Command Prompt and the smartphone is completed, the Command Prompt should display the list of connected devices, along with your device’s ID number.
8. Delete Facebook applications
Then enter the command adb shell and validate by pressing the Enter key on your computer keyboard.
This very powerful command allows you to execute all the commands entered from the computer on the Android smartphone.
To check it, the command prompt should show the device code name, in our case, star2lte: / $ where star2lte is none other than the code name of the Samsung Galaxy S9.
Then enter the following command:
pm uninstall –k –user 0 com.facebook.katana
Confirm by pressing Enter. If the order was successfully completed, the message Success should appear.
Then repeat for each of the Facebook packages on your device that you want to remove by typing the command
pm uninstall –k –user 0 followed by the name of the package noted in step 2.
If you change your mind and still want to reinstall Facebook through the Play Store, the application will behave like the native preinstalled version, and cannot be uninstalled.