How to Uninstall Apps on MacOS Sonoma & Ventura via System Settings
Uninstalling and removing apps is a necessary task on any computer, and the Mac is no exception. One of the benefits of MacOS is that it makes uninstalling applications pretty easy, and there are several ways to go about participating in the removal of apps from your Mac computer. One of the handiest ways to uninstall Mac apps is also one of the simplest, and that is by using System Settings in macOS Sonoma and macOS Ventura.
Other than being super simple, the benefit to using System Settings to uninstall apps is that you can see exactly how much storage space the Mac app is taking up, and therefore how much storage capacity you will recover by removing the app from macOS. This approach is a relatively new feature that has been implemented in MacOS, so if you’re unfamiliar you’re certainly not alone. Just read along and you’ll be up to speed shortly, removing apps quickly.
How to Uninstall Apps from MacOS with System Settings
Only modern versions of MacOS have the System Settings app removal approach, earlier versions of MacOS will not have this particular feature. If you’re running macOS Sonoma, Ventura, or newer, here’s what to do:
- Go to the Apple menu and choose ‘System Settings’
- Select “General” from the sidebar list, and then click on “Storage”
- Wait for ‘Applications’ to load, which will provide a size estimate, and then click the tiny (i) button next to the Applications size
- Now find the application you want to uninstall and remove from the Mac, and then click on it so that it’s selected, and then click on the “Delete” button
- Confirm that you wish to uninstall and remove the app from the Mac by deleting it
- Authenticate if requested with an admin account, and the app will be deleted right away
- Continue deleting other apps from the Mac to uninstall additional applications if desired, otherwise close out of System Settings and be on your way
You can quickly reclaim a lot of storage capacity on a Mac this way, by deleting apps that you don’t use often, or even don’t use at all.
You will instantly recover that storage capacity as well, making this a quick and efficient method to not only recoup some disk space but also obviously to remove the apps from the Mac too.
This is not the only way to uninstall and remove apps from a Mac, and in fact there are multiple other approaches available in varying complexity; the classic old school approach of dragging and dropping apps from the Applications folder into the Trash, a thorough but technical method using Terminal, a super-easy and thorough method that relies on a third party app (and AppCleaner is a great app which we’ve mentioned before several times, including as something that should just be built into macOS since it is so thorough), the LaunchPad trick which is a lot like iOS/iPadOS, and, a variation of this trick is available in prior MacOS versions as well by using the Storage Management feature in those versions. Whichever approach you use is OK, as long as it works for you and your MacOS workflow.
Do you have a preferred method of deleting and uninstalling Mac apps? What do you think of using the Storage feature in System Settings to remove apps from MacOS? Share your own tools, approaches, and wisdom in the comments!
I haven’t found a app that deletes or as some like to call it, uninstalls everything that a app leaves on a Mac. I do it manually and do it with FAF (Find Any File).
Only shows apps you downloaded from the app store, so for me only shows safari so its useless. better to use app cleaner
If you instead use the free AppCleaner.app, it searches your Mac for all the files and folders associated with the App you are deleting and gets rid of them. I just checked using AppCleaner and it does indeed find and delete files and folders which using System Settings does not.
The only Applications it shows is Safari, even though I have a few hundred apps installed. Ventura 13.6.6.
Regardless, as mentioned elsewhere, what’s really needed is a way to remove all the supporting files, not just the .app/
To uninstall apps on Mac OS I first use Remove-It. Once the files have been deleted I then open up Find Any File and search for any left over files (there always are) There are other apps that do the same job as these two but I chose them for the good results.
My main complaint about deleting apps is that files placed elsewhere on the system will persist. This creates a lot of system clutter over time, and some apps are particularly guilty of placing a lot of large files scattered around macOS and the user library folder.
They can’t be scattered very far – even if an app is installed for all users, there are still only 4 folders to clean out.
Good question.
This way to uninstall apps on macOS is completely new for me. However, uninstalling apps using this method also delete associated files (preferences, etc.)? If not, what happen with those files? The system will delete them after?
I use appzapper for years now . It removes all associated system files too
I never knew this existed in Mac OS – does this remove all of the app’s files installed in the system – things like extensions, plists, prefs, etc? thank you