HELP! How to uninstall android game of mine programically?

Hey, everyone! I have an android device, on which I have installed previously an apk which I cannot upgrade because it was done on another machine and with a debug keystore.

Now I am wondering if I can uninstall the old one upon installing the new update on the device (as a new app with a different keystore). I would be very thankful if you can help me with this. I pretty much googled everything.

Note: I found something with Intents and ACTION_DELETE, but I am not good with those android specific things.

Thank you in advance!

 

I haven't looked into this specifically, but I would be shocked if Android allowed you to delete one app from within another. Just imagine if apps could randomly delete each other at will... it'd be pretty dodgy from a security perspective.

 

@angrypenguin this is what I worry about as well, but I was hoping that the fact that I am also the creator of the other app (so I am well aware of its package id, etc) would somehow allow me to bypass any security.

 

Being the creator doesn't really make it any more secure. Imagine: your computer gets hacked, and now the attacker can delete stuff from all of your customers' devices. No thanks!

For that matter, I don't even want my app vendors deleting their own stuff from my device. License enforcement and safety are the only two reasons I can think of to stop people using stuff on their own devices, and neither require removing data.

 

@angrypenguin I just wanted to share with you since it may be of help in the future - I found a way to do it. It was tricky for me in Unity because its suppose to be in a Java script, but here what worked -

Code (CSharp):

1.         AndroidJavaClass unityPlayer = new AndroidJavaClass("com.unity3d.player.UnityPlayer");
2.         AndroidJavaObject currentActivity = unityPlayer.GetStatic<AndroidJavaObject>("currentActivity");
3.         AndroidJavaClass intentObj = new AndroidJavaClass("android.content.Intent");
4.         string ACTION_DELETE = intentObj.GetStatic<string>("ACTION_DELETE");
5.         AndroidJavaObject intent = new AndroidJavaObject("android.content.Intent", ACTION_DELETE);
6.         AndroidJavaObject uriClass = new AndroidJavaObject("android.net.Uri");
7.         AndroidJavaObject parsedUriString =
8.             uriClass.CallStatic<AndroidJavaObject>("parse", "package:com.placeholder.placeholder");
9.         intent.Call<AndroidJavaObject>("setData", parsedUriString);
10.         currentActivity.Call("startActivity", intent);