[T-Mobile Galaxy Note 4 General] jazzmachine:
Thanks for the topic/lists [MENTION=1957395]WaterMan![/MENTION] & [MENTION=7529907]kyoji001[/MENTION], I loves some debloating... wait! I... don't care for bloat... Err, both! :silly:

Are you guys using a particular tool for uninstallation or doing so manually? I've used TB with filters in the past but have encountered some (minor, but semi annoying) issues in the past. I had planned on using System App Remover on my next fresh install based on recommendations/friendliness wrt lib files but then an update added a location permission, which set off my sketch alert and put me off of that app.

Ok, this is going to be long... feel free to skim :good: I did an interesting test last night, although I'm still running 5.1.1 (TEKxodus 7.4R2). I had removed about 200 unwanted system apps along with their data via TB a couple of months ago. Like I said, issues were minor and sporadic (mostly various GAPPS fc's). My phone's been running fine, so I didn't bother trying the following until last night, mainly just in the interest of contributing to this discussion, although I can't say yet whether or not this is "safe" on MM... if you think it might be problematic for any reason, please chime in!

The steps that I took are here

: extracted the system/lib directory from my current ROM's install archive, cut & pasted the entire original system/lib directory into the same directory on the active TB debloated ROM skipping present files and replacing those that were missing/deleted - I skipped subfolders at first then checked my install to see if any of them were missing files which they weren't, next I wiped cache & dalvik in recovery and optimized databases in Synapse (for good measure...), step 4) ????, 5) Profit!(?)

I used Root Explorer to do my lib directory manipulation, and after copying the missing modules, I selected all files in my actual system/lib directories to get a count then did the same in the folder I had extracted which then contained all of the files that were already present and therefor skipped. There were 7 more files in my active lib directory, so it seems that's how many modules my debloating had removed.

I wasn't really sure if/how I'd be able to tell if restoring the modules had any positive effect since the only problems that I had with my phone were so sporadic. I did however run a bench (Antutu) before and after (this morning after the phone had been back on overnight and I had used it a decent amount). The main reason that I was curious about bench scores is that I expected to get higher average scores after debloating, but was surprised that my bench scores stayed exactly where they had been (always somewhere between 68,000 and 69,200. I always screenshot the detailed results with all of the sections expanded (scroll-capture :good: ) after running a bench and jot down any factors or settings that might have some impact on performance on the image before saving it.

Well, it turns out I was... very possibly... right to be suspicious about the lack of an increase in my average bench score. I made sure to use my phone some before testing after my dalvik/cache wipes and such - played a game for a bit, did some web browsing. So after some pretty surprisingly consistent scoring within a pretty narrow range, this morning I hit 72,871(!) with

all

of the extra points attributed to the (surprisingly, I suppose) 3D tests... some of the other results that I saw in the detailed section were actually a bit lower compared to my test from last night, but all within 500 points of my previous average, i.e. "normal". I'll test again in a week or so or before updating to MM (whichever comes first).

So to wrap this up, I would cautiously recommend this technique for debloating. Summarized: uninstall unwanted system apps however you want, then restore your system/lib directory to it's default install state from the extracted folder from whatever ROM you have installed. Do so at your own risk, of course, particularly if you're on MM. I'll follow the same steps that I posted after doing the update and report back on the results.

Thanks again for this thread and the bloat lists. This type of thread is always a super helpful resource!