My Desire's ROM is full. I have rooted the phone and using root explorer to remove garbage from the ROM. There are many apps in /system/app. Each app has a .apk file and an .odex file. Is it safe to move the *.apk files to my sd card to save up space? Or are they needed to run the application?
Thanx
norad73 said:
My Desire's ROM is full. I have rooted the phone and using root explorer to remove garbage from the ROM. There are many apps in /system/app. Each app has a .apk file and an .odex file. Is it safe to move the *.apk files to my sd card to save up space? Or are they needed to run the application?
Thanx
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Think you may need to read a fair few of the posts in the forum if you are asking is it safe to remove apk's.
A fair answer is yes and no.
Some you can some you can't.
Removing the wrong ones will cause havoc with your phone.
Why not try flashing one of the custom Roms on here.
Thanx Raze.
I believe that the operating system either *needs* or *doesent need* an apk file in the system/app folder for the app to function correctly.
My question is: Does android 2.2 *need* or *not need* the .apk file of an app to exist in the /system/app folder in order for the app to function correctly? Isnt the odex file enough?
Since apk's are package files, my impression was that maybe they are not needed after the app is installed.
deleted .apk file = uninstalled app
deleted important.apk file = havoc on your phone
norad73 said:
My Desire's ROM is full. I have rooted the phone and using root explorer to remove garbage from the ROM. There are many apps in /system/app. Each app has a .apk file and an .odex file. Is it safe to move the *.apk files to my sd card to save up space? Or are they needed to run the application?
Thanx
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You won't get any advantage from that; freeing space on the system storage partition won't lead you to have more room for your apps on the internal storage of your device: those are two different partitions. If you want more space on the internal storage partition you should flash a custom, resized partition table (you need s-off, look on the related topic for the howto) and (if you didn't do that yet) partition your sd, so that you can use a2sd scripts to move your stuff there. That's the best you can do if you wanna have more room for your apps, everything else won't help much imo
norad73 said:
Thanx Raze.
I believe that the operating system either *needs* or *doesent need* an apk file in the system/app folder for the app to function correctly.
My question is: Does android 2.2 *need* or *not need* the .apk file of an app to exist in the /system/app folder in order for the app to function correctly? Isnt the odex file enough?
Since apk's are package files, my impression was that maybe they are not needed after the app is installed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My understanding (please correct me if i am wrong as i am so used to windows phone) is that the odex file is simply the integrity of the apk. lots of roms now are de-odexed so you can push or zip-flash a file into its place and it will still function. if the rom still has the odex files this is not possible as the phone will check the apk against the odex file and bootloop. The apk is the install package and the woking part of the file itself. Your best bet would be to flash a rom with A2SD installed in it. This accesses a fat3 partition on your sd card which the android os sees as extra internal space. I'm running LeeDroid 2.2d A2SD version. I have more apps installed now than when i was on a stock rom (motonav, psx4droid, angry birds, snesoid etc) and my phone still says i have 85mb or 52% of my space left
Thank you guys, now it is clear.
I keep getting a storage space low warning on my Desire, and I am trying to find out how to free up some space. My phone is rooted, my sd is partitioned, and most of my apps are installed on the SD with apps2sd.
Any apps still installed on the phone do not support installing on the SD. I have removed almost all apps and left only a very few that cannot be moved.
EDIT: Just realized that HTC Mail data was taking up 65mb of the phone memory.... deleted it and now my phone can breathe again
you are rooted? well if you use a2Ext you dont have to move your Apps to SD.
Moved to Q&A as not development.
Please do not post such questions in development.
Check those articles:
Safe to remove apks:
http://androidforums.com/droid-x-al...t-apps-apks-removable-non-removable-root.html
http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/index.php?title=Barebones
Custom MTD Partitions (resize data, system, and cache):
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=806321
Related
I've been looking at the root folder using Astro and there are several files/folders. Can any be deleted, without causing any problem? I'm running out of space and am hoping some are just temporary files etc...
For example I've spotted the APK files are in \system\app. I never use the Peep or Teeter apps. Can I safely delete their APK files?
Thanks
p.s - I am using an unrooted HTC Desire.
bradavon said:
I've been looking at the root folder using Astro and there are several files/folders. Can any be deleted, without causing any problem? I'm running out of space and am hoping some are just temporary files etc...
For example I've spotted the APK files are in \system\app. I never use the Peep or Teeter apps. Can I safely delete their APK files?
Thanks
p.s - I am using an unrooted HTC Desire.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you cant delete them using astro, we only have write access to /system in recovery, use adb in recovery to delete them
edit, without root you cant delete anything lol
bradavon said:
For example I've spotted the APK files are in \system\app. I never use the Peep or Teeter apps. Can I safely delete their APK files?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In addition, deleting anything from /system won't actually gain you any more space for applications anyway due to the way that the filesystems are partitioned.
Regards,
Dave
Thanks guys. I take it you mean we've got write but not modify access to the \system folder? So we can write to existing files but not delete them.
I wasn't just asking about \system though but any files/folders in the Root folder. Are there any at all, that can be safely deleted? Or are you saying you cannot delete a thing without rooting?
Not that it sounds like it will make any difference, due to partitioning.
Thanks
Ok to put it as simple as possible:
- no you cant pretty much delete a thing apart from sd without root
- we cant do anything in the system partition while the system is booted due to the nand protection
- we can modify /system while in recovery (using adb)
- when you are running out of space it is on the /data partition, which have a fixed size so deleting from /system or anything else won't help
And at last my advice to you is to go root and install a2sd easy as pie and i've never had space problems since.
Thanks for the informative reply mortenmhp
I have just rooted my 2.1 Desire, trying to remove two of the mms.apk and one other mms file in the /system folder so I can install a different mms.apk, however when I try to do it, it says I dont have the proper permissions. Its rooted, I see the Super User icon in applications.
Any suggestions?
Please read a little before asking questions. It is commonly known, that we dont have full root access on the desire yet.
Due to the nand protection you cant edit the system partition while the system is bootet. You have to use a custom recovery image either via fakeflash or installed by unrevoked. Then you can edit the system partition by using adb commands.
Edit: which i also stated quite clearly 2 posts above yours several months ago
Is A2SD better than the Android 2.2 implementation? Which as far as I can tell just moves the APK (not apps/data) to the SD Card.
Thanks.
Well it is kinda off topic here but in my opinion yes it is better. I'm running a2sd+ atm. and you can make it move /data/data as well.
In froyo there have been some complications though when remountingSD after using it as mass storage. But you can read more about that elsewhere(i would provide a link but I'm writing from my phone)
So the conclusion must be that it is down to personal preferences
Thanks because the official implementation is something of a cop out. On WM you could run the entire App/Data etc... on an SD card.
other than moving apk from "data/app" to "system/app" there are other file i can move to free user space?
cache? dalvik?
some user config file? if they are only some kb i don't care about them
.dex file? they will be created after 1st run of an app but were they are stored? rom? user mem? can be moved?
i must admit i didn't understand what ur saying !
DarkAngel00 said:
other than moving apk from "data/app" to "system/app" there are other file i can move to free user space?
cache? dalvik?
some user config file? if they are only some kb i don't care about them
.dex file? they will be created after 1st run of an app but were they are stored? rom? user mem? can be moved?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
.dex files are used by the dalvik cache on odexed roms...... if your using a stock rom, root and use a custom rom with apps2sd. or you may want to think about changing the mtd partions on your device to add more space to /data
excuse me for bad english, my question is:
other then apk in data/app there are other file i can move to system partition to free space for app?
u can apply this without rooting , or install a custom rom, or maybe apply sibere's data2sd (basicly what Andro mentioned)
There're no useless files in system which you may move to have free space, it's only the .apk files which you can move or you may partition your sd card to have the required space.
Hundreds of tutorials available on how to partition the card.
gents,
I wonder in which folder the downloaded market apps go before the get installed.
Additionally the question rises if one can delete those files or do they get deleted automatically after installation??
HorNet505 said:
gents,
I wonder in which folder the downloaded market apps go before the get installed.
Additionally the question rises if one can delete those files or do they get deleted automatically after installation??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They are run from the location they are downloaded to on the phone. So when you download a file from the App Market it will be stored in the folder, installed and run from said APK. If you move it to SD it moves the file from internal to external. If you uninstall the file if it sits on the phones memory it will automatically delete the file.
Not quite. They are stored on the cache partition. They are not always deleted, but they do not take up app space as the partition size is fixed. And when the space is needed on the cache partition, eventually they are deleted.
Is the cache folder visible to me? What's it called.
I got the problem that, despite all my apps are moved to my SD card, the updates fill up my internal memory. I understood that the updated apps are as well moved to the SD card. This is my default setting as well i
Downloaded apks are gets stored in /data/app. You need ROOT access to locate them. Root Explorer will let you access these files.
ip2op01 said:
Downloaded apks are gets stored in /data/app. You need ROOT access to locate them. Root Explorer will let you access these files.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Let me make a correction here: installed apps are stored in /data/app (requiring root for write permissions). System apps are stored in /system/app (requiring S-OFF or Recovery mode for write permissions). Downloaded apks are stored in /cache/download, which is why in partition tables, where the cache partition is >5 MB, you should symlink the download folder to a folder in the sdcard, to be able to download apps larger than 5 MB. Otherwise the market will return the error "Insufficient storage available." or something like that.
Not that all of that really matters, seeing as this is a year old thread...
Please use the Q&A Forum for questions Thanks
Moving to Q&A
maybe a daft question but what is the benefit from deleting system apps,wallpapers etc.
does it speed up things , create more space?
anybody no
Speed up things? Not really, it is a linux based device, not windows But depending on what you delete (e.g. running unnecessary apps).
Removing factory stuff will create more space.
And what to remove? It depends on the ROM what you use. If it is a HTC Sense based ROM, then there is a list over at Leedroid's site what can be remove.
cheers, what will it create more space for tho? can u say obtain apk files of apps from the market and install then as system apps therefore creating more space for downloaded apps on internal memory?
Just cut and paste apks from /data/app into /system/app, preferably large apps that rarely get updated and your unlikely to uninstall.
Or
Use titanium backups "convert to system app" feature.
Don't forget they will disappear when updating your rom.
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App
i can convert to system apps in titanium, then backup the rom , extract the boot and system image and run it thru disxda kitchen and that will create a rom with the titanium backups in system apps .wont it??????
Not all apps convert well as system apps in titanium. Also I think you'd need to be s-off to do that.
Why not just run your rom.zip through dsixda, then drop the .apk's you want into the system/app directory and pack it up again?
sounds like a plan dan!
rootSU said:
Not all apps convert well as system apps in titanium. Also I think you'd need to be s-off to do that.
Why not just run your rom.zip through dsixda, then drop the .apk's you want into the system/app directory and pack it up again?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i used this method time ago and it works...
hi guys, just switched to cm7.1, its a good rom, i was wondering if its possible to add your own apps into the rom and then flashing it? what i mean is to add your own essential apps into the rom and then to zip it so it uses up more rom space and leaves more internal space. if there is a method, can some one please give some idea on it. thanks
Of course it is. Just copy the app's apk from /data/app in the /system/app folder of the zip file.
Thanks but can you explain abit more in detail please, like if i put the apks in that folder, will the apps automaically be installed? and as for the rom zip file, will that need to be zipped up back in a special way? also will the apk's need to be signed with a special program? a small accurate guid would be sweet. thanks
There are two ways, either manually open the zip (no need to extract it) then just drag and drop your apk files to the System/app folder or data/app folder then close the window. Sometimes it doesnt work it depends I think on how the files was compiled or something.
Or use ROM manager. Look it up in the forums.
Edit: Its Rom Editor if my memory recalls it correctly.
kuljit55 said:
Thanks but can you explain abit more in detail please, like if i put the apks in that folder, will the apps automaically be installed? and as for the rom zip file, will that need to be zipped up back in a special way? also will the apk's need to be signed with a special program? a small accurate guid would be sweet. thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, just open the zip and stick the apk's in that directory. Then when you go to flash just disable signature verification..
I'm not sure as to how this will go about saving space though.. it's the same as installing apps AFAIK
bortak said:
I'm not sure as to how this will go about saving space though.. it's the same as installing apps AFAIK
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In a way it does save space. I remove some apps that I don't need from the CM zip like ROM Manager, live wall paper etc and then add my apk files on system instead of it being saved in data folder.
Sthankyou, can i manually move apps in the data folder into the system with root explorer? i am s-off.
kuljit55 said:
Sthankyou, can i manually move apps in the data folder into the system with root explorer? i am s-off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
with root explorer yes, but I don't think they'll actually be installed just by putting them there..
kuljit55 said:
Sthankyou, can i manually move apps in the data folder into the system with root explorer? i am s-off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes you can manually install apks to the system/app using root explorer. But you have to modify the permission of the apk file upon transferring. It is best that you first copy the apk from the data/app folder to sd. Then uninstall the app. Then use root explorer to transfer the app from sd to system/app. Update the permission then reboot.
Take note that not all apps will work with this method. Some apps just needed to be on the data/app folder based on my experience.
Sent from HTC Desire via XDA App
Or use titanium backups "Covert to system app" functionaility
rootSU said:
Or use titanium backups "Covert to system app" functionaility
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yup. I forgot about that. Yeah damn easy too.