How Do I Permanently Remove YouTube From My Android Device?

On most Android phones, YouTube cannot be uninstalled the normal way. You long press the icon, drag it to Remove, and it quietly comes back, or the option never appears at all. That is because it ships as a system app. The fix is ADB: a command from your laptop that removes the app for your user account, icon and all, without needing root access. It is the same move behind our distraction free Android guide.

TL;DR: Connect your phone to a laptop with ADB, find the package name, then run adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.youtube.

What You Will Need

A laptop with the Android CLI, platform-tools, and ADB set up. If you have not done that yet, our Android SDK guide takes about five minutes. You will also need a USB cable and USB debugging enabled on your phone.

Step 1: Connect and Confirm

Plug your phone in, accept the debugging prompt on its screen, then confirm the connection:

adb devices

You should see your device listed as device, not unauthorized or offline.

Step 2: Find the Package Name

Android identifies apps by package name, not by the name on the icon. Find YouTube's:

adb shell pm list packages | grep -i youtube

On nearly every device this returns package:com.google.android.youtube. Note whether yours is different, because that is the name you will use in the next step.

Step 3: Uninstall It for Your User

First, try the plain uninstall, just to see what happens:

adb uninstall com.google.android.youtube

On a system app, this usually fails with Failure [DELETE_FAILED_INTERNAL_ERROR]. That is expected. The APK lives in a read-only partition. Here is the command that works:

adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.youtube

A Success response means YouTube is gone from your account. The icon disappears from your launcher, and the app stops consuming battery and data in the background.

Step 4: Verify It Is Really Gone

adb shell pm list packages | grep -i youtube

No output means it is removed for your user. Reels and YouTube Shorts surfaces inside other apps may still try to load videos through a browser, which brings us to the next step.

Step 5: Block the Obvious Way Back In

Removing the app is only half the job, because the Play Store can put it right back. If you are serious about this, remove the Play Store too, using the same pattern:

adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.android.vending

Be aware: removing the Play Store also removes your ability to easily reinstall any app. Read the Changing Your Mind section below before you do this.

Changing Your Mind

Nothing here is truly permanent, which is the safety net that makes it low risk. The system partition is untouched, so you can bring YouTube back at any time with:

adb shell cmd package install-existing com.google.android.youtube

As a last resort, a factory reset restores every system app to its original state. The point is not to lock yourself out forever. It is to put a real obstacle between you and the app, so opening it takes intention instead of muscle memory.

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Related: this is one piece of a bigger cleanup. See our guides to removing Instagram and Chrome with the same technique.