How can you remove Google Pinyin and Korean keyboard APK's

[AndroidBob]

I have my Nexus 7 tablet rooted but when I try to delete the APK for either Google Pinyin or the Korean Keyboard system apps with either Astro or ES File Explorer I get a message that the file cannot be deleted. As I do not use or need either of these apps and I am getting frustrated about receiving update notices all the time for the Google Pinyin I'm hoping that someone on the forum can shed some light on how to permanently get rid of these apps.

[JayJ]

I would recommend disabling them...

Menu> Settings> Apps...

Swipe the screen to the left twice to reach the All tab and scoll to find the keyboards, and now press to open the App Info screen and in the top right next to Force stop you'll see the disable option. Once disabled it should look like this...



Repeat for any other applications you wish to disable, and here's my disabled list...



Hope that helps.

[AndroidBob]

Thanks JayJ for your quick and detailed reply. I had accomplished what you suggested in your post prior to reading it by running Titanium Backup Pro with the Uninstall System Apps Option and selecting just the Google Korean Keyboard and Pinyin apps which resulted in disabling them. I confirmed this by going to Menu>Settings>Apps and these two apps now appear at the bottom of my apps list showing as being disabled. I guess it is true what they say "that there is more than one way to skin a cat".

[bjs229]

Is this the same as freezing them with Titanium?

[JayJ]

Yes there is more than one way to skin a cat.

And yes bjs229, this is the same as same as freezing in Titanium. Google added the ability to disable (freeze) applications into the OS since ICS (4.0.x), and pretty sure it can be done with all system apps but some you will have to uni stall updates and some you just plain don't want to be freezing.

[loociddreemr]

For clarification, un-installing through Titanum Back up is NOT the same as freezing the app.  Freezing is the same as disabling the app, whis is a seperate funtion for TiBu.  The only reason that the apps are shown on the bottom of the list in TiBu is if there is a current back-up of the app.  The backed-up app will appear in strikethrough. Disabling or freezing them will remove them from system menus as funtional apps, however they are still taking up the same ammount of storage space.  With a device that has a limited storage space, this is definitely a factor whether or not to completely remove the app or to disable it. 

[JayJ]

Nobody said uninstalling via Titanium was the same as freezing or disabling?
I was merely recommending that freezing was safer in case the uninstalling of applications cause issues with OTA updates.
Also I thought the system partition was fixed therefore uninstalling a system application makes no difference to user space, I believe the system partition on the Nexus 7 is around 670MB and my CM10 ROM has 280MB remaining gwhich cannot be used other that via the system?
Therefore uninstalling or freezing system apps makes little difference, if uninstalling makes no difference to user space then freezing is the safer option because it stops the application using system resources but is still a part of the system and with Google including freezing (disabling) we know it's the safest way to go.

Please correct me if I am at all wrong here??

[loociddreemr]

I was replying in response to AndroidBob who said that he used the uninstall option of Tibu which resulted in disabling the app.  Yes you are correct that the system partition can only be used by system apps, but I like to convert some of my user apps to system apps.  This allows a factory reset without the loss of those apps, and also frees up space on the storage partition.  I was also under the impression that system apps are given higher priority of resources.

Freezing is definitely the safer option, but thats what CWM backups are for! 

[JayJ]

Sorry I read your reply out of context, makes sense now you've reiterated what you meant.
And yes I too would recommend a nandroid back up before uninstalling any system apps.