The viral Indian app helping users get rid of Chinese software offers mixed results
Remove China Apps has racked up 5 million installs amid rising anti-China sentiment in India
The hottest app in India right now is an app that says it will detect and remove Chinese apps from your smartphone.
Just 10 days after it launched, Remove China Apps soared to the top spot on India’s Google Play Store. The developer OneTouch AppLabs says it racked up 1 million downloads in that period, and it currently shows more than 5 million installs on Google Play. The Android app purportedly identifies all the apps on a smartphone that are made by Chinese companies and lets users uninstall them.
If you’re found to not have any Chinese apps at all, you’ll be greeted with a message saying, “Congratulation[s]. You are awesome. No China app found in your system.” Whether you actually have no Chinese apps on your phone, though, is another question.
In our own testing, the app seems to have some major gaps in what it considers a Chinese app. Other reports also suggest results can be inconsistent.
While testing Remove China Apps on an Oppo Reno 2, the app successfully detected WeChat, Weibo, Taobao and UC Browser as Chinese apps. But mobile payments app Alipay, ByteDance’s short video platform TikTok, and the Tencent-made game PUBG Mobile were also installed on the phone -- and went unnoticed.