Hey, delete the Facebook app!

I got a Nexus 6 last year after my Nexus 5 took a swim in a pool. (Not sure how that happened; crazy little guy was acting on its own recognizance.) I've enjoyed using it quite a bit, but it's had a decent amount of frustrations, too: apps would load slowly, the battery life didn't seem to match up with what reviews and other users would claim, the camera would crash or be unresponsive when I wanted to take a quick snap of something, etc. Nothing insurmountable, but definitely a lot of slight annoyances that would pop up at inopportune times.

I'd heard that the Facebook/Messenger apps were the cause of some slowdowns on Android devices, but I didn't realize precisely how bad it was affecting my phone until I took the plunge this week and uninstalled both of them. It's almost like I just got a whole new phone: almost every action I perform feels far more snappy and responsive than it did just a couple of days ago. That's especially true of the camera. Opening up the camera from the lockscreen is accomplished in a couple of seconds now, whereas before it could often take ten or fifteen or more seconds for the camera to actually respond to input when I opened it, at which point my precious puppy would often be on his way out of my life forever. Scrolling through the photo roll is also way faster than it used to be. I'm not sure what the Facebook app was doing in the background to affect the camera that badly; I assume that face-scanning every picture and uploading all that data to the NSA must have been a bit taxing on it. Even the games that I play have much quicker startup and load times than they did before.

All of this is purely anecdotal, of course; I didn't measure and compare any concrete times with benchmarking apps or anything. But even so, I can confidently say that uninstalling the FB and FB Messenger apps have made a huge difference in the performance of my phone. You don't even really lose much by uninstalling, either; attaching a bookmark to the mobile Facebook site to your homescreen is easy enough, and if you give it notification permissions you'll still get the usual notifications for messages and all the other crap.

I know this all sounds like ONE WEIRD TRICK TO IMPROVE PHONE PERFORMANCE, but it's really been a crazy night/day difference since I dumped those apps. Try it and see!

Kill your facebook.

Yep! I previously had a droid Razr M and you couldn't uninstall the facebook app, just disable it, it took up loads of memory and was always running. I have a nexus 6p now, but I only use the facebook mobile site (which I great!) to access FB.

Removed my facebook account 2 years ago and haven't looked back. Ignorance is bliss.

Nice try, nerd! But it'll take more than that to get me off Facebook!

Seriously though, this reminds me of how I had a bunch of friends say their phones got faster because they uninstalled tumblr. Apparently tumblr was permanently downloading every image it went through, so over time it just ate up space. Weird stuff, you'd figure facebook would have it's mobile act together.

Yeah, I uninstalled mine after realizing just how badly it was tearing apart my battery life. It just isn't worth it, that thing is either an unoptimized train wreck, an intentional memory hog, or both.

For me, I had to uninstall the Kindle app since my phone kept randomly rebooting. I'll uninstall the FB messenger and the page manager thing since they're just taking up unneeded space.

After three years with my HTC One m7, I figured that software updates must be finally catching up with the older hardware, causing it to be bogged down - even though that's fairly ridiculous, it was the only thing that really came to mind. Uninstalling the Facebook/Messenger apps instantly made things ten times quicker and snappier. I never even use it. What the fuck. Thanks, duder!

Or you could always get an iPhone. ;)

@monkeyman04: boo this man!

Time for FB messenger app to die. Bye bye silly thing

It doesn't seem to do that on my phone but I also have a oneplus one which has some privacy settings. I basically told all apps to don't even think about waking up the phone or using anything in the background without asking first.

Maybe I should try it on my tablet when it gets super slow again but that thing is also old so it's always slow.

I had to disable auto updates because it was unusable while apps updated.

Yeah! I really wish I had tried this a long time ago. Huge difference for me.

Mark Zuckerberg hates him!

This is the last push I needed to finally uninstall the Messenger app too. I've read about how it tracks all your touches constantly just for their own R&D purposes, which is pretty ridiculous but I needed the app at the time. Thanks Rorie.

Coincidence that you brought this up Matt. A family members phone had recently been drained from battery life less than half a day. Tried disabling the Facebook app several times but it would always come back. So far its stayed down.

Weird, I've had the Facebook messenger app installed forever and never had problems with my phone or the app. I have a Moto G. -shrug-

Tried out using the mobile site on Firefox Android and yeah, that works so much faster than the app. Also Facebook app and Messenger require ~400Mb of space (290Mb+110Mb), which is insane when you consider that browser requires ~70Mb while offering more functionality and better experience.

That is actually kinda of alarming. I'm glad I never used them, but I will be sure to pass it along. Thanks Rorie!

Yep. I dumped it and messenger last year for similar reasons. That and I get tracked enough through Google and Microsoft already. I don't need another faceless (HaHA!) corporation foisting custom tailored ads upon me.

Having Greenify hibernate the apps definitely save my battery life.

One of my old phones had an internal memory of about 700mb, Facebook took up about 300 of that and couldn't be uninstalled or moved to external storage.

I've preferred bloatfree phones for this reason. I've purchased a Wileyfox Swift which is a neat little phone running CyanogenMod, its like a lower spec OnePlusOne.

Yup. Discovered it myself a few months back. Like @rorie said. It was like having a new phone. On my phone, HTC One M8, the apps also caused major heat issues.

Might just be a Nexus problem. I haven't experiences any weirdness on my S6 or S7 Edge.

Trying this out right now.
Honestly, I think this'll be more healthy for my well-being in the long-run.

I deleted the Facebook app last week. For some reason everytime it was updating my phone would slow down to a crawl and seemed like it was just about to crash. Plus it was over 400mb and I barely used it, so I pulled the trigger.

And now, after reading your post @rorie I deleted Messenger, since I barely used it too. And it's basically spyware. We'll see how the phone will behave without the Zuckerbloat.

If you're still a social media person and use android, grab Metal. It's much better on resources and battery life.

I did this back when sites were running news on it and noticed an instant improvement in speed on my Z5, and an extra 10-15% battery life on what is already a pretty good battery. I was even getting fewer typing errors that must have been due to slowdown (definitely not my clumsy thumbs, no way)

I got Metal, which isn't perfect (the notifications are really inconsistent), but it works.

Recently though, I've noticed that familiar lag coming back. It seems to line up with installing the Amazon app's environment for its own apps, for amazon prime video. That app itself is good and I appreciate being able to download episodes of stuff, but I think it's gonna have to go.

I've had this suspicion for a while. Whenever my phone (Nexus 5X) bogged down real bad I'd start flicking apps off the task list, and occasionally Force Stopping through the app menu. Facebook always seemed to yield the most improvement when I killed it. Getting rid of both apps now, and good riddance.

I don't have the Facebook app, just Messenger, but there's been no issues for me on my Galaxy S6 Edge.

@rorie: I've been using Opera as my browser on Android. It had this cool Facebook integration that alerts you like the app. Try it out if you still want SOME Facebook on your phone still.

I think Google would fire him.

I have a Nexus 5 and tried myself. Didn't really change anything that I can tell, but I use Nova Launcher so my UX is different from stock android.

I wonder if this is why my wife's phone's battery has been taking a dive lately. I'll have to give a shot. Thanks!

I'm new to Android (Galaxy S7 Edge represent) and now I'm paranoid about having Facebook installed. Thanks @rorie

I also uninstalled the Facebook app on my Galaxy S4 and also had better performance afterwards. If I feel the itch, I just visit the site in chrome. Also, uninstalling it got rid of the plethora of notification alerts which is nice.

But Messenger is my go to app for chatting to people :(

I don't notice anything as bad as Rorie is having on his Nexus with my Samsung, but it is worth investigating. The best way to check if an app or apps are slowing things down, is to start the phone in safe mode. Once in safe mode open your camera, browser, etc. If everything just works 2x or 3x faster as it is probably an app slowing you down. So then you should...well, the best advice is find a website that explains "How to Speed Up My Phone In 25 Easy Steps". There can be many issues, so you might as well be systematic about what you try.

I just checked my phone in 'safe mode' and the camera, e-mail, browser, and calendar work the same snappy way, so I think I am fine.

Ten tricks to make your phone faster that lawmakers don't want you to know about!

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Thanks for the heads up. Not a user of the social media stuff, but I have a coworker whose iPhone battery life went to crap after installing Messenger/Snap Chat. Every once in a while, I'll take a look at the applications and see what's using up CPU time/bandwidth. If something is suspect, it gets tossed out the window.

So I gave deleting Facebook and Messenger a shot. I wouldn't say my phone feels brand new, but it's certainly a bit snappier than it has been in recent times.

Holy shit. This totally worked for me. Now I don't have to go out and buy that new phone, and I can finally start weaning myself off facebook. Thanks!

Use What's App like most of us.

Thanks, @rorie! I'm perfectly fine ditching the Facebook app and that awful Messenger, and if that nets performance increases, all the better. Seriously, that Messenger doing an overlay on the entire phone is infuriating. Begone, evil spirit!

Other Android pro tips I've found:

1) Text input laggy? Delete your old text messages. Boy, this worked wonders for me on my Galaxy SIII. Enough old texts somehow hoses the entire keyboard's performance, even in web browsers as well. If you're anything like me, deleting old texts might not be the worst idea anyway.

2) Battery dies quickly? Anything rechargeable wears down over time. However, you aren't just stuck with a phone you have to keep plugged in all the time. Provided your phone has a replaceable battery, replace it! Anker makes OEM-caliber replacements that can be had for under $15 and delivered in 2 days via Amazon Prime. I replaced both the batteries on my S3 and the wife's S5 with great results both times. Highly recommend.

I've been able to hold onto a "dated" phone this long thanks largely to those two measures above. I'm excited to see if saying auf wiedersehen to the Facebook/Messenger helps as well. If nothing else, I enjoyed uninstalling them. :)

Well I gave it a shot and deleted Facebook and Messenger from my phone. It certainly FEELS a bit snappier, so I'll say this was a success.

Now I just need to get a replacement battery for my phone anyway. This Galaxy S4 is looking a bit long in the tooth, and the fact that the battery dies really fast isn't helping. Probably should have gotten a new one before PAX, but Amazon had a bunch of generic batteries I saw that had bad reviews and cries of fraud/shoddy production.

@notnert427 you say Anker is pretty good?

Ughhh, dammit. I uninstalled the Facebook app ages ago when they stopped supporting my device, but losing Messenger is going to be tough. It's the main way everyone in my group of friends communicates.

I've done this for a few years when I had an Android phone, and even now with my iPhone.

The web version of Facebook is better and you don't need to worry about battery drain :).

Removing Facebook app didn't noticeably improve things for me, but the website notifications totally work and the website is better than the app so I'm glad did it.

@cooljammer00: Yep. Cheap and awesome. Popped in Anker batteries in an S3 and S5, and they're like whole new phones.

Facebook has been exploded from the phone.

For some reason, the Twitter app came standard with my phone HTC One M9. I cannot uninstall Twitter. It's the worst thing about my phone.

I noticed this issue on my Nexus 6 with the Facebook Messenger App to. I uninstalled that POS immediately and it's back to normal.