The first one does tell you how to “completely remove Gemini from your smartphone” under that heading. I do not have the Gemini app installed.
The second one says:
Can you fully disable Gemini on Android?
No, and that’s by design. While you can turn off activity tracking, revoke permissions, and even uninstall the Gemini app on some devices, Google is actively replacing its Assistant app with Gemini.
But, I’ve also disabled Google Assistant across all applications, so I don’t share data with Gemini/Assistant. I had to lose some features to do so.
Overall, your reply serves to confirm for me that I have disabled Gemini on both of my Android devices. Still, I appreciate the links!
Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me either way. There IS a lot of telemetry and other BS that is definitely still on my phone, included in OS updates, and not uninstallable (I can “uninstall updates”, but that would also give me back any security issues). But, I don’t think that it is Gemini, or at least predates that naming convention.
To get free of Google telemetry, I’d have to install a non-Google ROM, and I haven’t ever tried that.
Telemetry certainly can be abused, and Google should be legally (by regulation) required to provide a simple opt-out. BUT, telemetry really is a fairly normal thing to include in “web-scale” deployments and is primarily used to discover issues that have escaped into production without affecting a testing environment–or, at least, that what the telemetry systems I’ve interacted with as an software developer were for. So, I’m not too worried about non-personalized data collection.
EDIT: I confirmed that Google says I have no Gemini activity to delete, so while I’m sure my phone is reporting stuff, it’s not to Gemini.
Nope, it’s still running in the background. You just turned off its ability to interact with you but can and does still interact with others.
Do you have some sort of evidence for this claim?
https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/how-to-disable-gemini-on-android/53771/ and https://proton.me/blog/turn-off-gemini-on-android were easy enough to find. If I remember correctly the grapheneOS guys spoke on this too.
The first one does tell you how to “completely remove Gemini from your smartphone” under that heading. I do not have the Gemini app installed.
The second one says:
But, I’ve also disabled Google Assistant across all applications, so I don’t share data with Gemini/Assistant. I had to lose some features to do so.
Overall, your reply serves to confirm for me that I have disabled Gemini on both of my Android devices. Still, I appreciate the links!
Trust him bro…
Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me either way. There IS a lot of telemetry and other BS that is definitely still on my phone, included in OS updates, and not uninstallable (I can “uninstall updates”, but that would also give me back any security issues). But, I don’t think that it is Gemini, or at least predates that naming convention.
To get free of Google telemetry, I’d have to install a non-Google ROM, and I haven’t ever tried that.
Telemetry certainly can be abused, and Google should be legally (by regulation) required to provide a simple opt-out. BUT, telemetry really is a fairly normal thing to include in “web-scale” deployments and is primarily used to discover issues that have escaped into production without affecting a testing environment–or, at least, that what the telemetry systems I’ve interacted with as an software developer were for. So, I’m not too worried about non-personalized data collection.
EDIT: I confirmed that Google says I have no Gemini activity to delete, so while I’m sure my phone is reporting stuff, it’s not to Gemini.