With the latest iteration of Pixel handsets, the Silicon Valley giant has promised an astonishing 7 years of guaranteed OS upgrades. These OTA updates from Google can be installed from the Settings menu once Google rolls them out. Although you may have the option to not install updates, this will be temporary in nature.
After some days, the OS may force you to install it such that your device remains up to date with the newest security patches. While this is well and good, there is still an option to completely skip the update. This is useful for users having a rooted device as installing OTA updates from Google can be a challenging task. Instead of carrying out this task, many techies prefer to skin them for some time and install them only when it is important.
With that said, Google has a hidden feature in the Developer Options in the form of Automatic System Updates. If you disable it, the updates will not get installed on your device upon a restart. if you want to learn more, you will find this guide helpful. In this guide, you will get to know how to force remove OTA updates from Google Pixel handsets.
How to force remove OTA updates from Google Pixel handsets?
To get the job done, you will need to disable the OTA app and GMS System Update Activity using adb shell. Here are the steps to force remove OTA updates from Google Pixel handsets –
- To start off, you need to download and extract Android SDK Platform-Tools on your PC
- After that, enable USB debugging on your device and connect it to your PC using USB
- Then, go to the platform-tools folder and type in cmd in the address bar before hitting Enter
- Now, type the following command to disable the OTA update –
adb shell pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.google.android.factoryota
- After that, type the following commands for disabling apps related to System Update Activity –
adb shell su -c pm disable com.google.android.gms/.update.SystemUpdateActivity
adb shell su -c pm disable com.google.android.gms/.update.SystemUpdateService
adb shell su -c pm disable com.google.android.gms/.update.SystemUpdateGcmTaskService
adb shell su -c pm disable com.google.android.gms/.update.SystemUpdatePersistentListenerService
adb shell su -c pm disable com.google.android.gms/.update.phone.PopupDialog
adb shell su -c pm disable com.google.android.gms/.update.OtaSuggestionActivity
- You will receive the SuperUser prompt and you will need to tap “Allow/Grant” and your task will stand successful as you can force remove OTA updates from Google Pixel handsets
