How to Uninstall Packages and Applications with ADB

It is very simple to remove applications or packages from your Android device using ADB. If you have ADB installed and have added a path to ADB in your bash profile we can do it with a simple uninstall command.

If you have not created a path to ADB in your bash profile then here is how you can do that. It will save you time in the future when you need to use ADB again.

Open Terminal
Type nano ~/.bash_profile
Press Return

You should have a Terminal window that looks something ike the one above. Copy the export PATH command below into your Terminal window replacing /Users/<yourusername>/Documents/android with the correct path to ADB.

export PATH=${PATH}:/Users/<yourusername>/Documents/android

Press Return
Press CTRL+X
Press Y to confirm
Press Return
Quit Terminal

If you already have the path to ADB set in your bash profile then start from here.

Open Terminal
Type adb devices
Check your device is listed

Type adb uninstall <name of package/application>
An example of this would be adb uninstall com.imdb.mobile this would uninstall the IMDB app.

If the app/package is removed then you will see Success if not the return will be Failure
If you do not know the name of the package/app you are trying to uninstall then do a search for it on the Play Store and in the URL you will see the package name at the end after id=

You can also check for your installed packages by typing the following into Terminal

adb shell 'pm list packages -f'

You can also use the -k parameter if you wish to uninstall an app but want to keep all the data and cached items.

adb uninstall -k <name of package/application>

You will get a warning message with this.