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Uninstalling Cinder

Four ways, ordered by how much of the device has to be working for them to run. The first one is the answer for almost everybody.

Removes Cinder Needs Use when
1. The installer Yes, completely A PC and a USB cable Normal removal. This is the one to use.
2. Boot to stock No — just stops it launching Nothing, or a USB cable You want the stock player for one boot, or you are testing.
3. adb Yes, completely The dev channel, adb working You are developing and want it gone without a flash.
4. Flash the uninstaller .UPG by hand Yes, completely Only the Sony updater The device will not boot far enough for anything else.

1. The installer (recommended)

Download the installer from the latest release, connect the Walkman by USB in mass-storage mode, and choose Uninstall. From a terminal:

cinder-installer --uninstall

It stages cinder_home_uninstall.upg as NW_WM_FW.UPG and nothing else, then hands off to the player's own updater the same way an install does. The player restores Sony's launch config from the backup the install made, deletes Cinder's binaries, and reboots into the stock Qt player.

Your music, playlists, and settings on the data partition are not touched. Neither is the stock player itself — Cinder never modifies Sony's binary, only the .appcfg that says which app to launch, and that is backed up to .appcfg.real on install.

It is a no-op on a device that never had Cinder, so running it because you are not sure is harmless. The installer will tell you what it thinks is on the player before you confirm, read out of the device's own install log.

Afterwards, cinder-installer --clean removes the staged payload files left in the drive root.

2. Just boot to stock (reversible, no uninstall)

Any of these — the device still has Cinder installed, it just doesn't launch:

adb shell 'touch /data/cinder/off; sync'     # stock every boot until you remove it
adb shell 'rm -f /data/cinder/off'           # undo

Or with no shell at all: plug the USB cable in and power on — cable-at-boot is the escape that needs no filesystem. Or drop an empty /contents/cinderhome_off over USB-MSC. Or Settings ▸ Boot to stock inside Cinder (fires once, next boot returns to Cinder).

3. Real uninstall over adb

The whole install is one repointed .appcfg plus files under /system/vendor/unknown321/bin. Restoring the .appcfg is the uninstall.

This needs the dev channel, which is the only one that enables adb.

Verify the stock backup exists before touching anything — it is the only copy of Sony's launch config:

adb shell 'cat /system/vendor/sony/bin/HgrmMediaPlayerApp.appcfg.real'

Expect four lines with command: HgrmMediaPlayerApp. If that comes back empty, stop — use method 1 or 4 instead.

Then:

adb shell 'mount -o remount,rw /system'

# restore stock launch config (this alone returns the device to stock)
adb shell 'cat /system/vendor/sony/bin/HgrmMediaPlayerApp.appcfg.real > /system/vendor/sony/bin/HgrmMediaPlayerApp.appcfg; sync'
adb shell 'cat /system/vendor/sony/bin/HgrmMediaPlayerApp.appcfg'   # confirm: command: HgrmMediaPlayerApp

# remove the binaries and helpers
adb shell 'rm -f /system/vendor/unknown321/bin/cinder-home \
                 /system/vendor/unknown321/bin/cinderhome-launch.sh \
                 /system/vendor/unknown321/bin/cinder-probe \
                 /system/vendor/unknown321/bin/cinder-umount \
                 /system/vendor/unknown321/bin/cinder-gpunode \
                 /system/vendor/unknown321/bin/cinder-power \
                 /system/vendor/unknown321/bin/cinder-msc \
                 /system/vendor/unknown321/bin/cinder-clock \
                 /system/vendor/unknown321/bin/cinder-fm \
                 /system/vendor/unknown321/bin/cinder-voltable \
                 /system/vendor/unknown321/bin/cinder-battery \
                 /system/vendor/unknown321/bin/ldac-run.sh'

# state, flags, logs, art cache
adb shell 'rm -rf /data/cinder'
adb shell 'rm -f /contents/cinderhome_off /contents/cinderhome_clear /contents/cinderhome_once \
                 /contents/cinderhome_DISABLED_badboot /contents/cinderhome_cable_off \
                 /contents/cinderhome_norespawn /contents/cinder_gpu_on /contents/cinder_gpu_off \
                 /contents/cinderhome.log /contents/cinderhome.log.1 /contents/ldac_off'

adb shell 'sync; umount /system'
adb reboot

Leave HgrmMediaPlayerApp.appcfg.real in place — harmless, and it's your backup if you reinstall.

If you changed the sound signature or the volume curve, undo those before removing the binaries; they patch files that are not part of the Cinder install and survive an uninstall:

adb shell '/system/vendor/unknown321/bin/cinder-signature.sh stock'
adb shell 'echo stock > /contents/cinder_voltable.conf'

Method 1 and method 4 handle this for you — the uninstall package reverts both.

4. Flash the uninstaller .UPG by hand

Works even when the device won't boot far enough for adb, because the updater runs before any of our code:

tools/flash.sh uninstall

That is the shortcut for cinder-home/dist/dev/cinder_home_uninstall.upg. The same package is attached to every release as cinder-home-uninstall.upg if you are not working from a checkout.

If the device will not enter mass-storage mode either, you are below the escape ladder and into RECOVERY.md.

What uninstalling does not undo

  • HgrmMediaPlayerApp.appcfg.real stays. It is Sony's original launch config; leaving it costs nothing and it is what a reinstall restores from.
  • Your files. Music, playlists (/contents/cinder_playlists), scrobbler logs and anything else you put on the data partition are left alone by every method here.
  • A stale media database. If the library was mid-rescan when something interrupted it, that damage predates the uninstall and survives it — see docs/DEVICE_TESTS.md and restore /contents/MTPDB_prescan_backup.dat.