How to Hide Unused Apps on the Galaxy S6

How to Hide Unused Apps on the Galaxy S6 is a post by Cory Gunther from Gotta Be Mobile.

This guide will show users that own the Samsung Galaxy S6 or Galaxy S6 Edge how to hide or remove all of those apps they never use. Samsung has a slew of its own apps pre-installed, and carriers in the United States typically add 10 or more apps themselves. This bloatware all take up valuable space, and fill the app tray with unnecessary icons.

The Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge are two of the most popular Android phones available today, but with no micro-SD slot for user expandable storage and tons of pre-installed apps, many users don’t have as much space as they’d like. And while we can’t uninstall most of them and get more storage space, we can disable and hide them.

Read: How to Make the Galaxy S6 Look Like Stock Android

Out of the box my Galaxy S6 had 16 apps pre-installed from AT&T, not counting Amazon apps, and over 30 total if you count Samsung’s Milk Music, TV apps, visual voicemail and everything else. Those all appear in the application tray, wasting space, as I’ll never use any of them. Users looking to get rid of Verizon Navigator, Sprint ID Zone, Nascar apps, T-Mobile TV and everything else carriers and Samsung add, read on for the quick how to instructions.

Some carrier or Samsung apps are actually extremely useful, so we’ll be hand-picking what we want to remove. Things like Verizon’s NFL Mobile is absolutely work keeping, unless you don’t like Football. The Samsung Theme app lets you change the look and feel of your entire device, so some users may want to leave that put.

Then there are apps like Samsung Milk Music which doesn’t hold a candle to Google Play Music, so I disable and remove that as well. All of the carriers in the U.S. bloat these phones with worthless applications that do nothing but usually waste space. Sure some owners use a few of them, but most likely all of them sit there, never being opened or access.

Thankfully with Android 4.4 and above these can actually be disabled and hidden from the app store, which also turns them off so they aren’t using battery life either. They can’t be removed or uninstalled to get storage back, but disabling them is extremely easy and only takes a few minutes.

Instructions

I’ve personally disabled 28 apps on my Samsung Galaxy S6 from AT&T to help clear space in the app tray, and clean up my device. Each user will have different needs and preferences, and the instructions below explain where to navigate to disable these apps, as well as where they’ll be so you can easily re-enable them if needed.

Read: How to Uninstall or Hide Unused Android Apps

Start by heading into settings by pulling down the notification bar and tapping the gear-shaped icon on the top right, or finding settings in the application tray. From here the easiest way is to simply tap “search” and type “applications. We’ll actually be navigating to settings > device > applications > application manager and then swiping over to the “all” tab.

In the “all” tab users will see every app that’s installed on the Galaxy S6. Scroll through the list until you find something like Samsung Milk Music or AT&T Mail, tap it to select, and there are multiple options. We can’t uninstall it, and force stop only temporarily turns off the app. Instead, select the “disable” button near the middle right as shown in the screenshot above.

Users will get a warning that disabling apps may prevent some services or features from functioning properly, so make sure to only disable things you never use. If something doesn’t work right later, you can always follow the same steps above and hit “enable” to re-enable the application and it will return to the app tray and work as it should.

I’ve gone ahead and completely disabled 28 apps on my Samsung Galaxy S6. Most of these are AT&T apps, a few from Amazon, and then a collection of apps I never use that are made by Samsung. This only takes a few taps in the applications tab under settings, and you’re all done. Now when users head to the application tray these are all missing, and only the apps that are actually used and wanted will be visible.

This process will clear apps from wasting space, let owners be more efficient as there aren’t as many apps in the application tray, and just helps clean everything up.

How to Hide Unused Apps on the Galaxy S6 is a post by Cory Gunther from Gotta Be Mobile.

How to Hide Unused Apps on the Galaxy S6