How I kicked Axel Springer off my Samsung phone

January 2025 · Last updated 2025-01-31 · 158 words

Via the Seedvault backup app for Android’s README.md I today stumbled over this nice Gist by AnatomicJC explaining how to backup one’s Android phone and also how to remove unwanted apps via ADB (no root needed).

I remembered I indeed had at least one app on my Samsung phone I wanted to uninstall but couldn’t via Play Store: “Upday News”.

Googling for “upday news” it seems most people are, like me, interested in getting rid of it: Screenshot of Googling 'upday news'

Following AnatomicJC’s short manual we first look for the app’s identifier:

adb shell pm list packages | grep -i upday

… but don’t find it. Huh?

Googling for “upday news package name” returns:

Information about upday for Samsung 3.1. 15157
Package Name de.axelspringer.yana.zeropage

WTF! It’s Axel Springer. Had I known, I would have thrown that app out long ago.

In my Alpine Linux WSL2 shell on my Windos work laptop:

flo-gram:~% /mnt/c/Users/fs-la/AppData/Local/Android/Sdk/platform-tools/adb.exe shell pm uninstall --user 0 de.axelspringer.yana.zeropage
Success

Good riddance.

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