this post was submitted on 05 May 2026
1008 points (97.8% liked)

Technology

84988 readers
3498 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] livligkinkajou@slrpnk.net 76 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)
[–] leoj@piefed.social 13 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

Can you even uninstall chrome on an android phone? I only get the option to disable.

[–] feannag@sh.itjust.works 12 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] leoj@piefed.social 4 points 3 weeks ago

this is very helpful info, thank you, didn't realize this was possible.

[–] zerozaku@lemmy.world 10 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Use Shizuku and Canta to uninstall any uninstallable app. Or if you don't want to bother, just disabling works fine too as long as you are not worried about the storage.

[–] ArchEngel@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 weeks ago

Learned about this the other day and gave it a whirl, worked great, felt reminiscent of old school iPod jailbreaking shenanigans, but I had no issues. Easier (in a way) than adb!

[–] ropatrick@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Thank you for the excellent suggestion. Worked perfectly. Managed to uninstall about 50 pieces of bloatware from my phone, starting with Chrome.

Props to you @zerozaku

[–] zerozaku@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Happy to help! Real props to the devs of these amazing apps.

[–] ropatrick@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago

Hear hear. 📢

[–] frischkaesbagett@feddit.org 7 points 3 weeks ago

That depends on the ROM you are using.

The one i am using (https://iode.tech/) is using a firefox based browser that you can actually uninstall.

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Probably not stock Android. I'm on GrapheneOS and it doesn't come with Chrome at all. But I don't think the article is claiming it happens on Android.

[–] FE80@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Vanadium is Chrome derived; but I'm sure Graphene de-enshittifies it to the maximum possible extent.

[–] Attacker94@lemmy.world 8 points 3 weeks ago

Technically speaking, it is chromium derived which does make the difference in this instance.

[–] jtrek@startrek.website 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Is this happening on android, too?

[–] leoj@piefed.social 2 points 3 weeks ago

I don't think so... yet... So not as disconcerting tbf, but curious to if it will come out of nowhere at some point, just like this.

[–] turboSnail@piefed.europe.pub 8 points 3 weeks ago

And install Firefox or one of its many forks.

[–] Fredselfish@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

So it just to the Chrome app?

[–] livligkinkajou@slrpnk.net 15 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The article actually gives 3 options:

The only ways to make the deletion stick are to disable Chrome's AI features through chrome://flags or enterprise policy tooling that home users do not generally have, or to uninstall Chrome entirely

  1. It can probably be reverted at their whim at any time
  2. You probably don't have access to it
  3. It is the most realistic option, just use another non chromium browser
[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 weeks ago

Even Chromium should be fine. I doubt it has the branded Google AI features.