Comments on: Uninstall Mac Applications

By: William Long II

William Long II — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 20:37:52 +0000

Dumbface Bill: Need to re-educate yourself on how windows works. While he may not have given a complete description on what the uninstall interface was, the control panel add/remove programs section, yes it will indeed list all programs that registered to windows that they were installed along with an uninstall location so that all you must do is click uninstall and it will remove the program and all associated files registered to it, as a side not sometimes those even not associated but that it utilized that “appear” to no longer be in use which can be a pain in the butt. Both windows and mac have their own issues however with programs that do not register completely or at all in some instances with the operating system in question and as such is not a fault of the operating system but the programs and their coders. Moving a file to the trash bin or add remove button in control panel are both trivially easy.
As to the article, I recently was asked to work on a mac and as a linux/windows user myself I am not completely familiar with mac’s layout and setup so this article was informative and helpful thank you author, Will, I believe for your post it was informative and helpful on the topics it was supposed to be on.

By: Anita

Anita — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 01:44:28 +0000

You’re all a bunch of major geeks!!! Just simply answer the questions asked, then get on out into that great-big crazy-fun world out there and have a life!

By: Dumbass Bill

Dumbass Bill — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 05:57:10 +0000

^ This guy’s noob. Doesn’t know what he is talking about. Windows DOESN’T delete software support files and registry just by going to “uninstall interface”. It is far more easier on a mac indeed. You could literally drag the application to trash and it will do a normal uninstall. Can’t do that on Windows. Get your facts straight.

By: Bill

Bill — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 00:56:46 +0000

“far easier on a Mac than anything you’ll encounter in the Windows world”

So apparently you’ve been smoking crack. On Windows just go to the Uninstall interface, double click on the program to uninstall, click yes to confirm. Done. It doesn’t require a clean-up operation like you’re showing here. Seriously it’s like you Mac fanbois have never used a Windows PC.

By: 9 Essential New Years Resolutions & Tips Mac Users Can Do Right Now

9 Essential New Years Resolutions & Tips Mac Users Can Do Right Now — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 20:31:40 +0000

[...] is taking up space. Take a few moments to check out your Launchpad and Applications folder, and uninstall what you don’t use anymore. Apps from the Mac App Store can be uninstalled simply by deleting [...]

By: Sanaan Barzinji

Sanaan Barzinji — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 20:21:20 +0000

i have had some issues with reinstalling dreamweaver, i’ve checked all, now it worked fine for me, thank you…. Sanaan Barzinji

By: David

David — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 14:02:37 +0000

now explain how to uninstall something installed with a .pkg file…

By: Abe

Abe — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 01:57:55 +0000

What about when trying to delete certain Mac applications [in Lion], like Chess; Image Capture? A message appears, “Chess can’t be modified or deleted because it’s required by Mac OS X.”

By: Larry

Larry — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 05:20:42 +0000

My OS deletes apps better than yours!!!

By: Jake

Jake — Wed, 30 May 2012 06:20:53 +0000

I disagree. Windows has programs that can scan a system before-and-after a program has installed and then use that list to cleanly uninstall everything.

And as far as I know, there’s no software on OSX that currently does that.

By: Declan

Declan — Sun, 06 May 2012 20:57:13 +0000

On lion you can only uninstall apps downloaded from the appstore the way described, for me anyway, but moving them to trash still works.

By: Randor

Randor — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 01:48:51 +0000

I’m trying to uninstall Flux.app because it doesn’t seem to work. But, I cannot uninstall in Launchpad because the black X does not show up. Matter of fact, when I click and hold on any app in Launchpad, the only app where the X appears are
iMovie and IPhoto. If I try to move Flux.app to trash I cannot because I get a message saying the app is “open.” How do I close the app so that I can trash it? Very frustrating.

By: 4 Simple Mac Maintenance Tips

4 Simple Mac Maintenance Tips — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 19:02:11 +0000

[...] Nonetheless, it’s still a good procedure to periodically run, especially after installing or uninstalling a bunch of [...]

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 18:33:17 +0000

@Chris – How are you supposed to know in advance that you don’t need an app? for example I want feature X, so I search for apps that provide that feature, I find apps A, B, and C. I try app A, it doesn’t work for me. I try app B, it doesn’t work for me. I try app C, I finally found one that works. So I drag apps A and B to the trash, which deletes the .app’s, but it does not delete the stuff they put into Library and the only way to get to the Library is to open the command line.

There is no way I could know before I tried them, that apps A and B would not work, so your suggestion to “only install what you need” does not help.

Uninstallation is something Windows and Linux* do right, and as evidenced by this article, Apple buries its head and pretends the problem doesn’t exist.
(*as long as you use a package manager)

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 02:58:58 +0000

Look if applications that you are worried about installing and trying to remove them, here’s an idea, JUST INSTALL WHAT YOU NEED!! stop arguing over who is right or wrong. it’s that simple. And to answer all of your questions and comments it really doesn’t matter whether you use an app to remove the residue files or manually it does the same thing.