How to delete shared preferences data from App in Android

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How do I delete SharedPreferences data for my application?

I'm creating an application that uses a lot of web services to sync data. For testing purposes, I need to wipe out some SharedPreferences values when I restart the app.

29 Answers

You can always do it programmatically as suggested by the other answers over here. But for development purpose, I find this Plugin very helpful as it speeds up my development significantly.

PLUGIN: ADB Idea

It provides you with features to Clear App Data and Revoke Permission from your Android Studio itself, just with click of a button.

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To remove the key-value pairs from preference, you can easily do the following

getActivity().getSharedPreference().edit().remove("key").apply();

I have also developed a library for easy manipulation of shared preferences. You may find the following link

https://github.com/farruhha/SimplePrefs

String prefTag = "someTag";
SharedPreferences prefs = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(applicationContext);
prefs.edit().remove(prefTag).commit();

This will delete the saved shared preferences with the name "someTag".

For Kotlin users it is fairly easy:

val sharedPref = context.getSharedPreferences("myPref", Context.MODE_PRIVATE)
 sharedPref.edit().clear().apply()

The Kotlin ktx way to clear all preferences:

val prefs: SharedPreferences = getSharedPreferences("prefsName", Context.MODE_PRIVATE)
prefs.edit(commit = true) {
    clear()
}

Click here for all Shared preferences operations with examples

None of the answers work for me since I have many shared preferences keys.

Let's say you are running an Android Test instead of a unit test.

It is working for me loop and delete through all the shared_prefs files.

@BeforeClass will run before all the tests and ActivityTestRule

@BeforeClass
public static void setUp() {
    Context context = InstrumentationRegistry.getTargetContext();

    File root = context.getFilesDir().getParentFile();
    String[] sharedPreferencesFileNames = new File(root, "shared_prefs").list();
    for (String fileName : sharedPreferencesFileNames) {
        context.getSharedPreferences(fileName.replace(".xml", ""), Context.MODE_PRIVATE).edit().clear().commit();
    }
}

One line of code in kotlin:

getSharedPreferences("MY_PREFS_NAME", MODE_PRIVATE).edit().clear().apply()
new File(context.getFilesDir(), fileName).delete();

I can delete file in shared preferences with it

My Answer:

In Java:

SharedPreferences myPrefs = context.getSharedPreferences("My_Pref", Context.MODE_PRIVATE);
myPrefs.edit().remove("my_key").apply();

In Kotlin:

val myPrefs = context.getSharedPreferences("My_Pref", Context.MODE_PRIVATE)
myPrefs.edit().remove("my_key").apply()

Kotlin :

  var prefs2: SharedPreferences? = context!!.getSharedPreferences("loginFB", 0)
  prefs2!!.edit().remove("email").commit()

This is my Kotlin method:

      public fun clearAllSharedPrefs() {
            val sharedPreferences: SharedPreferences = MainApplication.applicationContext()
                .getSharedPreferences("MY_CUSTOME_KEY", Context.MODE_PRIVATE)
            sharedPreferences.edit().clear()
            sharedPreferences.edit().apply()
        }

Just did this this morning. From a command prompt:

adb shell
cd /data/data/YOUR_PACKAGE_NAME/shared_prefs
rm * // to remove all shared preference files
rm YOUR_PREFS_NAME.xml // to remove a specific shared preference file

NOTE: This requires a rooted device such as the stock Android virtual devices, a Genymotion device, or an actual rooted handset/tablet, etc.

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