How to remove apps from the watch?

SuuntoMan

Hi I’m new to wear os so sorry if this is a silly question.

I launched the wear os app on my phone and went in to the watch storage. It shows that I have apps in my watch (mobvoi, tic health, tic exercise, etc.) but I don’t see them on my watch when I open the app list on it. Are these apps actually on my watch? Do they come preinstalled on all wear os watches ( I didn’t install them, I got the watch a few days ago,)? How do I remove them? Thanks for any help

Brad_Olwin

@suuntoman they are part of the system. I wouldn’t remove them. They may not be necessary, someone who has more knowledge can let you know.

BrunoH

@suuntoman I found the same MobVoi bloatware too when I had S7. I asked Suunto support about those packages, but they didn’t seem to be aware of them at all.

I don’t know why, but Wear OS seems to have these seemingly random MobVoi SW preinstalled. Some of them are health and fitness related, but there was at least one travel advisor app or something… It is annoying, but there is a way to resolve this! I followed these instructions and removed the packages:

https://hackaday.io/project/163610-random-hacks-of-kindness/log/158758-wear-os-smartwatch-uninstall-hidden-bloatware-performance-boost

Disclaimer: some real nerd skills are required

The only advantage I got was that I got some more storage space available. Really a minor benefit… Please notice that all those packages will return if you need to do a factory reset!

Aleksander H

@brunoh @SuuntoMan I don’t think (emphasis on think there) that this is an issue unique to the Suunto 7. Seem to remember this being discussed regarding other watches. You might want to try asking about it on the WearOS group on Reddit. Someone there might now what the deal is with those apps.

pilleus

@suuntoman with adb you can uninstall all these preinstalled and deactivated apps, but only for the current user, not from the watch. This would be possible with root access.

These apps are preinstalled on most WearOS watches, but deactivated.

It’s no gain of additional space, it’s just a cleaner app list on the watch and the watch will not be faster.

pilleus

These packages from Mobvoi are installed and deactivated, but not upgradeable:

package:com.mobvoi.wear.fitness.aw
package:com.mobvoi.ticwear.sidewearvoicesearch
package:com.mobvoi.wear.social.aw
package:com.mobvoi.wear.account.aw
package:com.mobvoi.wear.appsservice
package:com.mobvoi.wear.neteasemusic.aw
package:com.mobvoi.ticwear.aw.appstore

With adb you can uninstall these packages without any problems for the S7 or its system:

adb shell
pm uninstall -k --user 0 <package_name>

They are not available for the current user then, but in the app info on the S7 these packages are listed further on, because without root access there is no way to remove these packages completely from the watch.

Aleksander H

@pilleus said in How to remove apps from the watch?:

These packages from Mobvoi are installed and deactivated, but not upgradeable:

Hmm, so basically all from Mobvoi. Is this on the watch for the Chinese market?

SuuntoMan

Thanks for the help! I guess they’re a part of wear os. They don’t take that much room so no point in removing them, I was just wondering what they were.