Hello everyone,

recently, I'm not sure when, I have lost the ability to deactivate two stock apps: The AOSP Keyboard and Graphene OS Camera.

I like to deactivate and replace these apps with the closed source google ones with shut off network permissions like some others here.

A few days ago I wanted to try out these two stock apps again which I did not enjoy. But now I can't seem to deactivate them again. They are not set as defaults and I have tried clearing the cache as well as rebooting which did not resolve the matter. It's no urgent matter, but maybe someone can tell me if they can reproduce this behaviour or if I might be overlooking something.

Thanks.

    hisar GrapheneOS Camera was recently added to the list of mandatory system components. That's because the OS uses GrapheneOS for media capture intents, and users have been disabling it without realizing it can break things. If you really want to disable the app, you can still do so via ADB.

    https://grapheneos.org/releases#2023012500

    Edit: Similarly, you can't disable the GrapheneOS Keyboard app but you can disable it as an on-screen keyboard, so it won't appear in the keyboard switcher menu. Go to Settings > Languages and input > On-screen keyboard

    Thank you very much for the explanation, everyone.

    I'm kind of particular about these things, so I do still wish you could hide it (and other things) from the app drawer. But it makes sense.

      hisar If you only want to hide it from the app drawer, you could install a launcher that has that functionality.

        treequell I'm aware of that possibility, but I have always felt like the experience with alternate launchers feels inconsistent or a bit buggy.

          hisar There are a lot of excellent launchers on F-Droid / Github. For example Neolauncher which greatly resembles Nova Launcher or Lawnchair and is actively developed, or something more minimal like M Launcher or Kiss Launcher. All which allows you to hide and rename apps.

          Camera cannot be disabled through the OS (can be disabled through adb but not recommended) because apps that use camera intents can only use the system camera since Android 11. So people could be potentially breaking app functionality without even realizing why.

          Keyboard cannot be disabled as if you replace it with a keyboard without direct boot support, you won't be able to use that keyboard to login after a reboot (when the phone is in BFU state). The AOSP keyboard needs to be there as a fallback to help you not get locked out.

          I hope that helps.