Help Wipe Default Apps and use Google App ecosystem only

[SorenRichenberg]

I love my Huawei P20 Lite and I love the Google Ecosystem. This is my first time posting here.
I don't like having two of each app on my phone and only using one out of a pair; Calendar & Google Calendar, Mail & Gmail, Contacts & Google Contacts, Huawei Cloud & Google Drive, Gallery & Google Photos, the list goes on.

I want the app library on my phone to consist of Google apps only. I know that some of these apps can be disabled, uninstalled, or defaulted out to Google's apps, but my app drawer is still littered with apps that I will never use because I favor Google's app. I still have to sift through widgets from duplicate apps when I customize my home screen. They occupy drive space on my phone.

Is there a way to make my phone behave as if the operating system was customized by Google alone instead of Huawei? Are there any less extreme solutions that will allow me to override Huawei's 'uninstall-protection' and get rid of their apps only, keeping the Huawei launcher and select Huawei apps (like the File Explorer for example)? What would the pros and cons be to the solutions?

 

[Hadron]

I don't know Huawei software so can't advise on that. You'd need root to do this, at which point you also have to do your own updating (I don't know how good Huawei are with updates anyway) and lose access to some apps which won't run on rooted devices.

But there is a simpler way to do most of what you want if you give up the Huawei launcher. Disabling apps actually means they don't use space (all of that's removed apart from what's in the system partition, and you couldn't use the space there anyway), so is as good as uninstalling. Any you can't disable you can hide by changing launcher: many third party launchers allow you to hide apps from app drawers, and of course with most launchers you don't have to put all of your apps on the desktop. So between disabling what you can and using a replacement launcher you can get close to what you want without root.

 

[Dannydet]

A great alternative launcher to use is Nova Launcher, in the play store.
Try it and you'll never go back to your stock launcher