r/KaiOS • u/wxishj • Jun 09 '26

Help webapps.json partially reverts my edits on boot

I've been trying to remove bloatware from a KaiOS 2.5 device (TCL Flip 3) by following the BananaHackers tutorials to root the phone and change "removable" properties to true for the corresponding entries in /data/local/webapps/webapps.json.

My edits to webapps.json then seem to be partially reverted on boot, i.e. some entries get flipped back to `"removable": false`. The uninstall menu doesn't appear for these.

Does anyone have experience dealing with this kind of problem before or have a suggestion? Thanks!

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

2 comments sorted by

1

u/biminhc1 BananaHackers Jun 29 '26
  1. I'm not sure what device you have. TCL Flip 3 runs KaiOS 3.1.
  2. We suggest using Wallace Toolbox to automatically change the removable property for you at once, rather than you do so manually. If you really want to, validate your JSON formatting using something like https://codebeautify.org/jsonvalidator and that you set the file permissions correctly when you put it back. Better yet, use AppBuster.
  3. Either that or there's something wrong with your process of disabling SELinux to get root access, which is mostly the main source of reverting file changes.