(no subject)

[the_rck]

My phone keeps trying to auto-download updates to apps that I don't want, and I have no idea how to stop that permanently or to delete those apps. I'm afraid it will start downloading at some time when I'm not paying attention and when it will eat up my bandwidth. I don't want a Google program for taking photos or Google+ or Google hangouts. I really, really don't want Softcard, a program for using my phone to pay for things (I assume I have to give it information in order for it to do that). That seems to be the first thing to try to download each time.

Comments

[kyrielle]

Are these apps it already has on it, or new ones? If it already has them, deleting them might be the easiest way to get it to stop, though some phones come with stuff they really don't want you to clean off. Putting it on your wifi and letting it update at home is the easiest way to deal with that.

I know with my iPhone, I can set it to *only* update on wifi; maybe you can Google your phone and see if there's a way to do that?

[the_rck]

These do seem to be built-in apps that I can't delete. I've been trying, but it won't let me get rid of any of them. I've been trying.

Most of them, I can kind of see how they might be considered generally useful, but there's, of all things, an NFL app. Is professional football really that popular? And most of the others are really pointless for me-- I'm never going to use Google hangouts on my phone, for example, and I'm not going to want to edit MicroSoft Office documents-- Neither Scott nor I actually have Office on our laptops. I'm also not likely to stream movies or read books on my phone. I'm at home 95% of the time, with my laptop, and when I'm out, I'm generally doing something that keeps me busy.

I'll see if I can set it to only download when it's using wifi. The dratted thing did come with a small manual, so maybe that information is in there. At the very least, the manual will tell me the actual model number of what I've got. That doesn't appear on the casing, and I haven't yet found it by wandering through menus.

[thornsilver]

There should be an option to ask you before downloads. At least my android phone has one, and so did the one before.

[the_rck]

I will see if I can find that. In this particular case, there was a system update that it asked permission for. That update apparently reset everything to auto-download without consulting me. I had to let each download start and then manually take away auto-download permission (I'd already done that earlier in the day for every single one of those programs) and terminate the process.

[ramenkuri.livejournal.com]

I think you need to go to Play Store, tap on the upper left menu square/hamburger menu -> my apps > settings -> app auto-update -> don't update apps automatically

Also you can turn off app updates on an app to app level

[the_rck]

The problem is that each system update changes my don't update automatically back to update automatically, so that I have to go through each app individually after each system update.

I'm also not sure what the Play Store is. The Appstore is an Amazon thing and won't let me do anything unless I login which I'm hesitant to do. I don't want my phone to hold that information. I don't want it connected to my Gmail or my search history, particularly not as something that's always and automatically logged in. If nothing else, the stupid thing was pinging every time I got an email, and I get two or three dozen messages a day and a number at night. I don't want my phone to know that I've got email.

[ramenkuri.livejournal.com]

Oops, I assumed that you used Play Store (from Google) for your apps, rather than Amazon's AppStore, so ignore everything I said.