Recently my phone has been updated to Android 10, with it I found the Digital Wellbeing spyware reinstalled and now fully baked in (no uninstall or disable option).
The prerequisite for this process: you need ADB (the installation of which will not be covered here). No root needed (yet).
Here is the ADB command you need to run:adb shell pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.google.android.apps.wellbeing
This change is semi-permanent, if you want this nagware back, I can’t really help you (you might be able to reinstall it from the store).
I do not understand the reason one would use this app. If you think you spend too much time on your phone, you don’t need an app to tell you that. My phone is a tool, and having some lock-out and nagging (self-inflicted!) on your own device is absurd.
It is absurd to bake this app in, the only reason is to spy on its users more.
If you hate this app (and everything it stands for) as much as me give it one star on the google play store.
It’s affecting my device entirely
Digital wellbeing delete
A million thanks for this! I’ve now installed adb on my PC, and used it with Powershell to uninstall this spyware. Now I’m looking for more apps I don’t use to uninstall, and I’m gonna make this phone MY phone instead of Goobles!
No matter what you disable on Android os google and other shady people will be able to monitor you as this OS was build with that primary purpose in mind. This Digital Wellbeing will only create a more structured data for them to use, for example they can easily query in their BigQuery analytics database: what is the our in region X where are the most users that are watching the screen so they can charge more for advertising during that hour.
Hi Sergei,
I stubbled upon this article while searching for some other information.
By no means I am a nerd (which I hold in high regards), but I am a little bit geeky 😀
When U use “-k” this means that U want to Keep the app data and cached data.
I wouldn’t know why someone whishes to keep that specific data in this situation.
So IMO it’s better the use the following command:
adb shell pm uninstall –user 0 com.google.android.apps.wellbeing
Since it is a system app it can’t be fully uninstalled without root, but only uninstalled per user (hence the “user 0”)
Therefore when U install any app with the “pm uninstall –user 0” command, U can easily reinstall them with “pm enable”:
adb shell pm enable com.google.android.apps.wellbeing
For more info and other ADB commands, see the following link:
https://technastic.com/adb-shell-commands-list/#adb_shell_pm_uninstall
But my best advise would be to degoogle Ur whole phone by installing a custom ROM.
Personally I’ve installed Lineage OS 18.1 (based on Android 11) without any Google apps on my phone and it works flawlessly.
Last month version 19.1 (based on Android 12) came out, but I haven’t installed it yet.
https://lineageos.org/
https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/
Take care!
*Therefore when U UNinstall any app with the “pm uninstall –user 0” command…
Just wanted to add this for anyone who reads this page, as it’s still searchable on the net.
The poster **ANTHONEY** stated – “”When U use “-k” this means that U want to Keep the app data and cached data.””
Which is true, but first of all, you’re not uninstalling these apps from the phone, only from the user, they’re still in the phones system partition. The only way to remove them from the phone is if you root the phone. But removing the data an cache from user, could stop you from getting OEM updates, so you *should* use the -K in the command line.
You’re uninstalling from the user so no more data is logged so it’s not
spying anymore, so leaving old data that was already seen by the OEM
is moot.