A quiet system component on millions of Samsung Galaxy phones runs constantly in the background, and Samsung won’t let you stop it through the usual settings. Device Care—the built-in maintenance suite that manages battery, storage, memory, and app sleeping—is hardwired to operate without restrictions, as first reported by MakeUseOf on July 28, 2026. The report confirms that Samsung permanently sets Device Care’s battery mode to “Unrestricted” and grays out the Disable button, leaving users with no conventional way to rein it in. The workaround, hidden in Android’s developer toolbox, requires a single command via Android Debug Bridge, but pulling that trigger comes with meaningful trade-offs.

The app that manages everything—except itself

Device Care isn’t a third-party cleaner masquerading as a system tool. It’s a deeply integrated part of Samsung’s One UI, responsible for automating battery optimization, memory cleaning, storage diagnostics, and the aggressive app-sleep policies that put unused apps into deep freeze. When you open Settings and tap “Battery and device care,” you’re looking at its dashboard. What most users don’t realize is that Device Care is also a persistent background process, always watching.

MakeUseOf’s investigation found that even on phones where Device Care had never been manually launched, the service still appeared in battery usage stats—and not always harmlessly. Because Samsung exempts the system package com.samsung.android.lool from its own battery restrictions, it can run whenever it likes. Android’s Adaptive Battery learns your habits to limit idle apps, but Device Care’s automatic routines—triggered during overnight charging or idle periods—can override that logic, closing background tasks it deems unnecessary.

That creates a paradox: Device Care decides which apps get to stay awake, yet itself cannot be touched. On its App info page, the Optimized and Restricted battery modes are grayed out; so is the Disable button. A force-stop works temporarily, but the service resurrects after a reboot. For power users who want full control over their device, this architectural lock-in is a frustration. For everyone else, it’s often just an invisible drain that occasionally disrupts the apps they rely on.

The ADB command that breaks the lock

Since Samsung’s Settings UI offers no way out, the path to disabling Device Care runs through Android Debug Bridge—a command-line tool that Google provides for developers to communicate with Android devices from a computer. The process does not require rooting the phone, nor does it permanently delete the APK. It simply disables the package for the primary user profile, making the service vanish from the app drawer and halting all its background activity.

The command itself is a single line:

adb shell pm disable-user --user 0 com.samsung.android.lool

Before you can run it, you’ll need to prepare your phone:

  1. Enable Developer options and USB debugging – Go to Settings > About phone > Software information and tap “Build number” seven times. Then navigate to Settings > Developer options and toggle on “USB debugging.”
  2. Install Google’s SDK Platform Tools – Download the package for Windows, macOS, or Linux and extract it to a folder like C:\\platform-tools. Open a terminal in that folder.
  3. Connect your phone via USB – When prompted, check “Always allow from this computer” and tap Allow. Confirm the connection by typing adb devices. If your device appears, you’re ready.

After executing the disable command, Device Care disappears from the app list, stops monitoring apps, and releases any background restrictions it imposed. All the automated optimization, sleeping lists, and battery-hunting jobs halt. Your phone keeps running, but without the system service that used to second-guess Android’s own power management.

Reversing the change is just as straightforward:

adb shell pm enable com.samsung.android.lool

Run that, and Device Care returns exactly as before—no data lost, no settings reset.

What you lose when Device Care goes silent

Disabling Device Care isn’t a surgical removal of a single annoyance. It’s more like blowing a fuse on a control panel: the entire suite disappears. That means you lose access to:

  • The battery-usage breakdown and estimated remaining time
  • Storage cleanup tools (duplicate files, junk files)
  • Memory boost and the widget that shows free RAM
  • Samsung’s proprietary app sleeping controls—both the “Sleeping apps” and “Deep sleeping apps” lists become inaccessible
  • Device diagnostics and ad-blocking features (Samsung integrates an ad blocker into certain Carrier builds, which is part of Device Care)

For someone who relies on those tools daily, this is a significant trade-off. If your primary concern is simply that Device Care keeps misclassifying important apps as deep-sleep candidates, you don’t need to disable the whole package. Samsung’s own support guidance points to a more targeted fix: manually adding those apps to an exemption list.

The smarter fix for most users: audit the sleep lists

Before reaching for ADB, open Settings > Battery and device care > Battery > Background usage limits. There you’ll find three categories: “Sleeping apps,” “Deep sleeping apps,” and “Never sleeping apps.” The first two are populated automatically by Device Care based on how often you launch each app. The last one is yours to manage.

This is where you rescue apps that need persistent background access:

  • Wearable companions (Galaxy Watch, Fitbit, Garmin) that track steps and sync notifications
  • Security cameras and alarm systems that must send instant alerts
  • Health apps that monitor heart rate or medication schedules
  • Home automation clients that trigger routines based on location or time
  • Rarely opened but vital tools like password managers, two-factor authenticators, or backup clients

Add them to “Never sleeping apps,” and Device Care will leave them alone while continuing its housekeeping elsewhere. This approach preserves all the useful battery reporting and storage tools while eliminating the conflicts that prompted you to consider ADB in the first place. For the vast majority of Galaxy owners, this is the best first step—one recommended by Samsung’s community forums and its official help pages.

How we got here: the logic behind Samsung’s locked-down approach

Device Care’s privileged status isn’t a bug; it’s a deliberate design choice that dates back to Samsung’s early additions to stock Android. When One UI first introduced the unified maintenance hub, the idea was to shield less technical users from having to micromanage caches and app permissions. Automatically putting infrequently opened apps to sleep seemed like a net positive for battery life, and in many cases it is. But the algorithm that decides which apps are “unused” only checks whether you’ve opened them manually—not whether they’re silently doing real work in the background.

As Android matured and introduced its own Adaptive Battery in Android 9, the overlap grew. Google’s system also puts idle apps into restricted buckets, but it learns from usage patterns rather than raw launch counts. Yet Samsung’s Device Care remained stubbornly autonomous, still applying its own sleep policies on top of Android’s. Worse, Samsung locked Device Care’s battery mode to “Unrestricted” so that it could never be throttled by Android’s own power-saving features—ensuring the maintenance service always had priority.

Over the years, users have complained in Samsung forums that critical apps—health monitors, email clients, alarm apps—were being silently silenced. The official response typically pointed them to the “Never sleeping apps” list, but that assumes users know the feature exists and understand how to navigate to it. Many don’t, and the grayed-out battery options for Device Care itself became a symbol of lost agency.

The MakeUseOf article brought new attention to the issue by surfacing the ADB workaround and testing it. It confirmed that while Samsung never intended for users to take this route, the command is safe, reversible, and fully respects Android’s multi-user architecture. The package manager’s disable-user flag targets only the current user (user 0 on a primary phone), leaving the underlying system image untouched. No root privileges are required, and a factory reset would restore everything to stock.

What to do now: a decision tree for every Galaxy owner

Because disabling Device Care is a binary choice with cascading effects, you should follow a logic-based path before opening a terminal.

For casual users whose apps are misbehaving

  • Check which apps are sleeping: open the Background usage limits page.
  • Move any app that depends on real-time notifications or periodic syncs to “Never sleeping apps.”
  • Reboot and test for a day. If problems persist, investigate whether Android’s own battery optimization (per-app, in Settings > Apps > [app] > Battery) is also involved.

For power users who loathe automated maintenance

  • Confirm you’re comfortable losing the entire Device Care dashboard, including storage tools and battery stats.
  • Make a note of any Samsung-specific features tied to Device Care, such as the secure Wi-Fi ad-blocker on some carrier models.
  • Proceed with the ADB command, but first ensure you have a second method to monitor battery health (like AccuBattery) and manage storage manually.

For IT administrators managing fleets

  • Do not push out a blanket ADB disable across managed devices. Samsung’s enterprise documentation warns that Device Care’s interdependencies can vary by model, carrier build, and One UI version.
  • Instead, use a mobile device management (MDM) policy or Samsung Knox to preconfigure the “Never sleeping apps” list for business-critical software.
  • If testing shows that Device Care is causing persistent issues, deploy the ADB command only after validating it on your exact device fleet and ensuring your helpdesk knows the reversal procedure.

For the repair-minded who want to undo a previous disable

  • Connect the phone to the same computer you used before, verify adb devices, and run adb shell pm enable com.samsung.android.lool.
  • If you used a different ADB tool or an on-device solution like LADB, the enable command works identically.
  • No reboot is needed; Device Care reappears after a few seconds.

Outlook: a quiet battle between user control and system optimization

Samsung is unlikely to loosen Device Care’s grip in future One UI updates. The company views its integrated maintenance suite as a differentiator, and the automatic app-sleeping feature touted as a battery-saving benefit. However, user awareness is growing, and communities on Reddit, XDA, and Samsung’s own forums continue to share workarounds. What the MakeUseOf report underscores is a broader tension in modern smartphones: the more a manufacturer automates optimization, the more power users will seek to reclaim manual control. Tools like ADB will remain the pressure-release valve for those willing to learn a single command, while the “Never sleeping apps” list will serve as the safer, officially sanctioned alternative for everyone else.

For now, the pragmatic path is to audit what Device Care has been doing to your apps before you decide how aggressively to disable it. Your phone’s maintenance suite should work for you, not against you—and with this knowledge, you can finally make it do exactly that.