I got a Huawei Android phone recently and it has been working fine. One irritating thing however has been its built-in “HiSearch”. Most apps you can disable, or at least ignore, but HiSearch is by default linked to the swipe down action on the homescreen. It even seems to sometimes trigger when scrolling through a widget. I did not want to use it, but triggered it by accident more than I would like to. Removing it is apparently just some adb fun away. No root access needed.

The Solution

Connect your phone to your computer, ensuring USB debugging is turned on. Execute the following to start a shell running on your phone.

adb shell

In this shell, execute the following to remove the HiSearch package.

pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.huawei.hisearch

Now the package should be gone and you will no longer trigger HiSearch accidentally.

ADB?

The Android Debug Bridge (or adb) is a way to “talk” to your phone through the command line. Check out Google’s explanation on how to install it. It will be platform dependent. On macOS, you can use homebrew:

brew cask install android-platform-tools

USB Debugging?

Go to your Android settings, about your phone, find your build number and start tapping it. Once you have tapped it often enough, it will turn on Developer Options. Go to Developer Options and turn on USB debugging.