Want to remove an app you’ve installed on a recent Amazon Fire or Fire HD tablet? All you need to do is long-press the app icon on your home screen, then tap the “uninstall option” that appears at the top of the screen after you release your finger.

But what about apps that come pre-installed on the tablet? That’s a little trickier. But it turns out there is a way to remove pre-installed apps. It doesn’t even require rooting your device.

I’ve tested this method on the 2017 Amazon Fire HD 8 tablet, but it should also work with recent 7 inch Fire tablets.

Update: The method described below works with tablets running Amazon’s Fire OS 5.4.0.0 or earlier. But it does not work with Fire OS 5.4.0.1 or later

For more up-to-date information on Fire Tablet hacks, check out this article:

Amazon Fire tablet hacks: Google Play, Root, Recovery, and ROMs

As noted by xda-developers forum member DragonFire1024, all you need to do is connect your tablet to a computer with a USB cable, set up adb (Android Debug Bridge), and then run a couple of quick commands in a terminal window on your Windows, Mac, or Linux computer.

The first thing you need to do is enable developer options on your tablet and then enable adb connections. . Here’s how to do that:

  1. Open the tablet’s settings menu.
  2. Select “Device Options.”
  3. Scroll down until you see your serial number and quickly tap it 7 times.
  4. A new option called “Developer Options” should appear.
  5. From the new Developer Options menu, tap the option labeled “Enable ADB.”

If you’ve already set up the Android SDK or some other application that includes the Android Debug Bridge, you may be ready to go. But if not, you’ll want to download the latest Android Platform Tools for your operating system and unzip them to a folder on your device.

Once that’s done, you can plug your Fire tablet into your computer with a USB cable.

Next, open a terminal window (on a Windows computer you can do this by typing “cmd” into the Start Menu search bar) and navigate to the folder you just created.

Now, type “adb devices” into the terminal window and hit enter. If this is your first time doing this, the ADB daemon should start and an alert should pop up on your tablet screen. You’ll have to approve the connection before you can continue.

Once that’s done, you should see a list of connected devices in the terminal window.

Now for the fun part: uninstalling apps. Note that I’m using quotation marks to show what you should type, but you should not type the quotation marks themselves.

  1. Type “adb shell” and hit enter to open the shell.
  2. Type “pm list packages” and hit enter to see a list of apps installed on the tablet.
  3. Once you’ve found an app you want to remove, type “pm uninstall -k –user 0 packagename” where packagename is the name of the package you want to install.
  4. Type “exit” to exit the shell and “exit” again to close the terminal window/command prompt.

For example, “pm uninstall -k –user 0 com.amazon.kindle” would remove the Kindle app.

Theoretically you could use this method to remove any of the software you don’t like on the Fire tablet, including the home screen/launcher, the Amazon appstore, and yes… Amazon’s “special offers” feature that places ads on the home screen and in the nofication area unless you pay $15 to remove the ads.

You will need to know the name of the app you want to uninstall. And uninstalling some applications could cause your Fire tablet to stop functioning as expected.

For example, some users have noticed that after installing a third-party launcher and uninstalling the Fire launcher, the home button does not work.

The good news is that if anything goes wrong you should be able to reinstall apps using related adb shell commands. Just use the install command instead of uninstall.

And if things get totally messed up, you can perform a factory reset. The method described above removes apps from the user portion of your Fire tablet’s storage.

It does not affect the system partition. So restoring your tablet to its factory condition will bring back any apps you’ve removed (although it’ll also overwrite other data, so this is probably a last resort option for most people).

More details at xda-developers

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30 replies on “How to uninstall any app from an Amazon Fire (or Fire HD) tablet, no root required”

  1. I connected my tablet to my laptop and typed in “adb devices” into the command prompt, but when I typed “adb shell”, it said “no devices/emulators found. Does anyone know why this is happening and how I can fix this?

  2. I connected my tablet to my laptop and typed in “adb devices” into the command prompt, but when I typed “adb shell”, it said “no devices/emulators found”. Does anyone know why this is happening?

  3. this did NOT work for me it got stuck at 1.Type “adb shell” and hit enter to open the shell. it reported error no devices found while my Amazon Fire HD 10 is plugged in but does not show up on folders/my pc folder and yes I do have ADB enabled

  4. i followed all your instructions, but when I entered “adb devices”, the terminal reacted with a: “command not found”… maybe I have to install the software “Android Studio”?

    1. Ran into the same problem – once you’re in the folder containing the adb tool, you have to enter “./adb devices”, from there it should work the way this post details. Also use the “./” when entering the “adb shell” command.

      1. Correction – this allowed me to get into the shell and list the apps installed, but upon trying to delete something I received the message “Failure [DELETE_FAILED_INTERNAL_ERROR]”, same as others mentioned above. IDK.

    2. Although this technique does not seem to be working anymore, I will reply to your comment for future reference.

      Once you’ve extracted the files, I would recommend renaming the “platform” folder to something like “adb” and then moving it to your C:\

      You Run the “command prompt” (Windows key + R and type in “cmd”), the you have to navigate to the “adb” folder in C:\

      to do this, after executing the Win+R above. Type “cd..” then hit ENTER; do this several times until all you see on the left is C:\

      Then, type “cd adb”

      After this last command, you will now be inside the “adb” folder where the adb executable is located.

      From there, commands should start working.

      USB connection problems:
      First of all, try to use the original Fire USB cable. I initially tried this procedure with a generic micro-USB cable. Although the Fire would charge from my USB port, it would not get detected by my PC and within the tablet’s USB options, it would show “not connected”. I switched to the original USB cable my Fire came with and suddenly, Windows detected it.

      Before it did though, I had to switch the tablet’s USB option to Transfer mode and give my PC a few seconds to install the drivers. I also had, on the tablet, to give permission to my PC to access the tablet. So you should have a popup on the tablet with a bunch of letters and figures (a mac address) asking you if you’re OK with a device attempting to access you tablet…. say yes, of course.

      Good luck!

  5. After I navigate to the file and run the “adb devices” command, no notification on the tablet asks me for permission and the “List of Devices attached” is empty. Then I entered “Adb Shell” and was told “error: no devices/emulators found”

    I think that means that my Kindle is not connected in any meaningful sort of way, but I am not sure why.

    Any suggestions?

    *And yes it is plugged in with a USB cord and ADB is enabled

  6. It doesn’t appear to work for me. I keep getting the response Failure [DELETE_FAILED_INTERNAL_ERROR]

    1. Interesting. Did you get a Fire OS 5.4.0.1 over-the-air update? It hasn’t come to my tablet yet, and I don’t see it on the Amazon support page.

      1. Confirmed, 5.4.0.1 blocks this method. The update was just pushed out within the past 1-2 days here.

        1. Confirmed x2. I got the update today and this no longer works for me either. I considered blocking the OTA update, but decided I don’t want to miss out on security updates.

          So far the apps I’d *previously* removed still seem to be gone. We’ll see if they come back in a future update.

  7. Any idea how to get rid of “Books,” “Audible,” and “Newstand” in the [RECENT][HOME][etc.] scrollbar on the home screen? I uninstalled the apps, but those headings are still in the scrollbar.

    1. The only way known is to use Parental Controls. Use that to clean up the home menu. That is the only know way even after uninstalling the apps.

  8. Does this actually uninstall them or just freeze them? I see their gone, but there isn’t any change in free space

    1. from xda forum:
      “these applications truly aren’t being uninstalled from the device, they are just being uninstalled for the current user (user 0 is the default/main user of the phone). That’s why, if you omit the “–user 0” and “-k” part of the command, the command won’t work. These two commands respectively specify that the system app will only be uninstalled for the current user (and not all users, which is something that requires root access).”

  9. Odd that it’s $15 to remove ads on the Fire tablets, but $50 to remove them on the Moto G5 Plus. You hardly notice the ads on the Moto.

    1. On their tablet it’s still their tablet with their apps and their store and their modded OS ads or not.

  10. Don’t know the procedure for other OSes but for Ubuntu/derivatives, you don’t need the entire SDK. You can just get the ADB and Fastboot tools with this:

    sudo apt update
    sudo apt install android-tools-adb android-tools-fastboot

    I haven’t installed these tools yet as I’m interested in learning the ins/outs and any benefits Fire OS might offer. I figure once it’s gone (via root/flash when available), I’ll never look back again.

  11. The name of the apps in the terminal is usually different than the name one sees in the launcher or app store.

    Is there an easy way to be certain what is being uninstalled is what one intended?

    1. I think people are still building a list. I came across this extensive list just now from user: kenijo at XDA (add httpss to front of link). He broke down the apps into four categories:

      forum.xda-developers.com/hd8-hd10/general/root-required-remove-amazon-bloatware-t3636796/page4

      Too long to paste here, but here’s a snippet:

      # Alexa Cards
      pm uninstall –user 0 amazon.alexa.tablet
      # Advertising ID
      pm uninstall –user 0 com.amazon.advertisingidsettings
      # Amazon GameCircle
      pm uninstall –user 0 com.amazon.ags.app

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