I have an A53, running Android 13. I’ve recently noticed that if I uninstall an app and the reinstall it, it still has login credentials. That leads me to believe that uninstall isn’t really deleting all the associated data.
How do I truly purge all the data from these apps from my phone?
I tried to Google the issue, but all the answers wanted me to download additional software, which seems antithetical to my goal.
(Please keep it simple; I’m not so good with tech.)
I think what’s happening is the app is using Android’s account manager to store credentials. These are part of the system and not removed when an app is uninstalled.
If this is what’s happening then you can go to “Passwords & accounts” in settings and find the account to remove. There really shouldn’t be any data left over and you shouldn’t need to clear app data and cache before uninstalling, the system takes good care of that when the app is uninstalled.
it depends per app, some store it as a file (that’s rather hard to delete if you don’t know where you’re looking for), but most apps probably use Google login. Google login can act almost seamless and will give you the idea the app keeps logged in.
I appreciate your answer, but these weren’t Google login situations. The instances I noticed were for Lemmy and Reddit apps.
Edit: I never used chrome for these, just DuckDuckGo, and I never saved credentials.
Without a third party cleaning app? (I don’t recommend if you aren’t technically inclined BTW, most are shit) you need to go in to your system settings, find the app in question, and clear cache and local storage before uninstalling.
Leave them installed and delete their data in settings.
Try disabling the built-in android backup system? I’m just guessing here though.
Maybe you have another app installed with which the app in question can share logins?
I’ve noticed that some apps like those from Meta can somehow share logins. For example, if I have Facebook installed and logged in, and I install the Oculus app, it will prompt me to sign in with my Facebook account.
At least for me (grapheneos) when i uninstall an app it asks if i want to keep the apps data, and i always uncheck the box so it doesn’t get saved. But @deeznutz@lemmy.dbzer0.com is probably right, go to the app info and clear storage before uninstalling to totally wipe it
It is likely that the apps you uninstalled actually support automatic backup. When you uninstall an app that supports automatic backup, their data backed up into your Google account will be restored next time you reinstall them.
I think you can review those backups from the Google Drive app. Open Google Drive app, go to settings, then find “auto backup for apps / backup and reset”. Mine says I have 79 apps backup with 99MB backup data in total. Not sure how to actually delete individual backup though. Some says if you delete the app from your play store download history, it’ll clear the backup data, but can’t verify it right now.
In summary, the data is deleted from your phone when you uninstall the app, but if the app support automatic backup, it’ll download the last backup data from your Google Drive account when you reinstall the app.
The app developer is able to declare the behavior on uninstalls. The easist option is to purge the data while the app is still installed.
Settings > Apps > Select your app > Storage and Cache > Delete Storage
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