I have an A53, running Android 13. I’ve recently noticed that if I uninstall an app and the reinstall it, it still has login credentials. That leads me to believe that uninstall isn’t really deleting all the associated data.
How do I truly purge all the data from these apps from my phone?
I tried to Google the issue, but all the answers wanted me to download additional software, which seems antithetical to my goal.
(Please keep it simple; I’m not so good with tech.)
Without a third party cleaning app? (I don’t recommend if you aren’t technically inclined BTW, most are shit) you need to go in to your system settings, find the app in question, and clear cache and local storage before uninstalling.
It is likely that the apps you uninstalled actually support automatic backup. When you uninstall an app that supports automatic backup, their data backed up into your Google account will be restored next time you reinstall them.
I think you can review those backups from the Google Drive app. Open Google Drive app, go to settings, then find “auto backup for apps / backup and reset”. Mine says I have 79 apps backup with 99MB backup data in total. Not sure how to actually delete individual backup though. Some says if you delete the app from your play store download history, it’ll clear the backup data, but can’t verify it right now.
In summary, the data is deleted from your phone when you uninstall the app, but if the app support automatic backup, it’ll download the last backup data from your Google Drive account when you reinstall the app.
I think what’s happening is the app is using Android’s account manager to store credentials. These are part of the system and not removed when an app is uninstalled.
If this is what’s happening then you can go to “Passwords & accounts” in settings and find the account to remove. There really shouldn’t be any data left over and you shouldn’t need to clear app data and cache before uninstalling, the system takes good care of that when the app is uninstalled.
