Bloatware

Bloatware can be defined in 2 main classes:

• Pre-installed or bundled: features not required by a system (physical or digital) to work properly, and/or undesirable programs.
• Software that has become bloated over time

While the term "bloatware" is commonly ascribed to software, hardware bloat also exists. See IoT devices for examples.

How it works

Bundled features often arise as pre-installed software and applications, because the device manufacturer (OEM) has a contract or partnership with another corporation. The terms and processes leading to these partnerships, however, lack transparency.

Software that gets bloated across updates typically happens because of negligence, but can also arise due to lack of resources (time, money, etc...) and external factors (such as libraries with feature creep).

Bloat can be a symptom of a decline in quality of devices and services, colloquially referred to as enshittification.

Why it is a problem

Non-removable

All major OSes (iOS, Windows, Android, etc...) don't allow removing, uninstalling, or disabling, bloatware; they only allow disabling a very narrow set of apps.

Many Android device manufactures have taken extreme measures to prevent users from disabling trivial apps, even via ADB (a tool designed for developers and power-users). Some OEMs, such as Samsung, are known to artificially introduce bogus dependencies between apps, so that if a user disables an undesired app it also breaks basic features of the system.^{[citation needed - unfounded accusation]}

MS Windows is well-known for preventing the disabling of apps such as Internet Explorer and Edge, even when the user already has an alternative browser installed.

Tracking and advertising

One study determined that personal data collection and user tracking was prevalent in pre-installed apps, with the data collection including personally identifying info (PII) and geo-location data, personal email and phone call metadata, contacts, behavioral and usage statistics as well as isolated malware samples.

Unsafety

Bloat, in any of its forms, raises privacy and security concerns. As a rule of thumb, every added branch of code can make a program exponentially harder to prove for correctness, making it impractical or impossible to verify that a program is not malicious (such as spyware) or has an exploitable vulnerability. The problem is exacerbated if the source-code of the app is not available, since reverse engineering is difficult and (in some cases) illegal. This means that user is unable to control or ensure the safety of their devices.

Poor performance

Bloat is known for causing sub-par user experience (UX):

• Increased latency, "slowness", when using programs and applications
• High memory use prevents or impedes multitasking
• High power usage increases energy bills and reduces battery lifespan
• Over reliance on network connections (e.g., internet) preventing data from being cached locally, which can both impede access as well as increase cellular-data billing
• Instability issues due to difficulty in testing and verifying big code-bases

Ecosystem damage

If non-sustainable energy sources are used to power these devices with bloatware, bloat can contribute to climate change. This is true for any excessive processing (CPU, GPU, etc.) and network abuse (such as AI training). Hardware bloat can increase e-waste.

Ethical and moral concerns

Bloated software can be prohibitively expensive to use on developing countries, which marginalizes poor people. Bloated software and hardware can have such a low performance (or have high instability) that it can't effectively help the user achieve the task that the product was designed for, such as scheduling a session with a therapist.

Examples

• Examples of "desirable" software with much feature-creep are modern GUI web-browsers. This has lead to alternative "web-space" projects being created, such as Gemini.
• The most popular example on Windows is Candy Crush, which is either preinstalled or pseudo-installed (only the icon is shown, but the app must be downloaded). MS also allows OEMs to bundle extra apps.
• On Android, while many users use the main Facebook app, most devices come with several hidden "stubs" such as "Facebook App Installer", "Facebook Services", "Facebook App Manager", etc... Some of those run in the background regardless of whether the user is logged-in or has the main app enabled.
• Many Samsung devices have 3rd-party integration with GIF and "sticker" providers in the Keyboard app, such as Bitmoji and Giphy.

Tools to deal with bloat

This is a list of tools that can be used (or are primarily used) to reduce bloat:

• uBlock Origin (uBO). A general-purpose content blocker for web-browsers. It's worth noting that its "Cosmetic Filtering" (element hiding) can, in rare cases (such as animated elements), improve performance.
• NoScript. Much more specialized than uBO, as it only deals with JavaScript.
• LibRedirect. On-browser (client-side) redirector of popular websites to privacy-respecting alternatives (alts). Most of those alts are lightweight, so it can be used to avoid bloat rather than remove bloat.
• privacy.sexy. A tool for improving security and privacy on popular operating-systems, it also serves as a "debloater".
• Android debloaters:
  • Universal Android Debloater Next Generation (UAD-NG). A desktop app that uses ADB to disable (or "freeze") and pseudo-uninstall almost (OEMs block some) any app (including system packages) without root-access.
  • Canta. An Android app that uses UAD-NG's bloat-lists as its knowledge-base (KB), and Shizuku as ADB replacement.
  • AppManager. An "all-in-one"/general-purpose package manager that runs on Android. It uses a derivative of UAD's lists as its KB. It can show a lot of hidden info about apps, which can sometimes be used for reverse-engineering.
  • Droidrunco, superseded by Zilch
• NetGuard. An app that uses the local Android VPN API to filter internet traffic (like a firewall). It can be used as an on-device Pi-hole to block ads using hosts-files as rules.
• Rethink, DNS + Firewall + VPN for Android. Can use local and remote DNS.
• youtube-dl & YT-DLP. Audio/Video downloaders or "rippers". Similarly to LibRedirect, it can be used to avoid bloat, by simply downloading the main content of a page. There's also --get-url/--print urls options that can be used to open the URL of the media in a browser, effectively streaming it, without a customized player

Note that those tools only help users, they don't reduce bloat on the development side.

External links

• "The 49MB Web Page"; a study on popular news/journalism sites. They also talk about cognitive-load and silent automated bidding, criticizing the degraded UX and privacy violations.
• "Web Obesity Crisis"
• HTTP Archive: Page Weight
• The Growth of Web Page Size
• Javascript bloat in 2024
• "Software disenchantment"
• uBlock-wiki counterpoint to "Who cares about efficiency, I have 8 GB RAM and|or a quad core CPU"
• Why Modern Software is Slow–Windows Voice Recorder