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Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

notes.alinpanaitiu.com

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Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#11

Post by kitsunesoba »

kergonath wrote: post #9
kitsunesoba wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess they’re just expected to be left behind in case you change your mind and want to reinstall the app later. That way you’ll still continue where you left with the same settings. And if apps are well behaved, only writing tiny config files in ~/Library/Preferences/ and the like, it’s not really a problem. The amount of space taken up in that situation was tiny even when OS X 10.0 was brand new and 10GB was a c…

> On the other hand if the app pulls an Adobe and leaves tons of relatively heavy crap strewn about, yeah it should probably come with an uninstaller. Google is guilty of this sort of things as well. Well, it was anyway at some point. I somehow managed to get rid of everything, including their updater that re-installs itself regardless of what you do to remove it. I wish we had more control over sandboxes so we could…

> I wish we had more control over sandboxes so we could put some software in solitary confinement with no possibility to write anything anywhere without asking.

I’d like this a lot as well, but expect it to come with the usual griping from devs about desktop OSes improving their security models and/or giving the user more control over what third party software can do. Anything short of full access to everything seems to be seen as tyranny.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#12

Post by timothevs »

tinglymintyfrsh wrote: post #8
MissTake wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, still leaves them behind. I’ve been using AppCleaner ( https://freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/ ) for years now and it’s a real neat (and free) app that’ll do a pretty decent job of cleaning up crud.

AppZapper isn't free, but it's much more thorough.

Really? I thought it was abandonware… I used it all the time back in the day, but I thought it went the way of the Disco app.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#13

Post by krackers »

tinglymintyfrsh wrote: post #8
MissTake wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, still leaves them behind. I’ve been using AppCleaner ( https://freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/ ) for years now and it’s a real neat (and free) app that’ll do a pretty decent job of cleaning up crud.

AppZapper isn't free, but it's much more thorough.

Based on https://reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/qwp9db/i_have_compared_b... seems like AppCleaner is the more thorough one?

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#14

Post by kccqzy »

kergonath wrote: post #9
kitsunesoba wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess they’re just expected to be left behind in case you change your mind and want to reinstall the app later. That way you’ll still continue where you left with the same settings. And if apps are well behaved, only writing tiny config files in ~/Library/Preferences/ and the like, it’s not really a problem. The amount of space taken up in that situation was tiny even when OS X 10.0 was brand new and 10GB was a c…

> On the other hand if the app pulls an Adobe and leaves tons of relatively heavy crap strewn about, yeah it should probably come with an uninstaller. Google is guilty of this sort of things as well. Well, it was anyway at some point. I somehow managed to get rid of everything, including their updater that re-installs itself regardless of what you do to remove it. I wish we had more control over sandboxes so we could…

macOS already has a sandbox. In practice many sandboxed apps can't actually write to /Library or ~/Library. They write to a sandboxed directory that pretends to be ~/Library further containing directories like ~/Library/Application Support. The real path of that directory is generally under ~/Library/Containers.

Now for obvious reasons Apple cannot force all macOS apps to be sandboxed. It was already a PR hit when they required Mac App Store apps to be sandboxed.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#15

Post by tacker2000 »

MissTake wrote: post #4
mdmglr wrote: post #2

I recently had to uninstall some apps and it’s common for apps to litter files throughout /Library and ~/Library. The UX from early MacOS days is you can drag/drop the App to the Trash Can to uninstall it. Does MacOS actually clean up the misc. files applications leave at some point?

Nope, still leaves them behind. I’ve been using AppCleaner ( https://freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/ ) for years now and it’s a real neat (and free) app that’ll do a pretty decent job of cleaning up crud.

This is just unbelievable. The billion $$ company cant just automate the uninstall procedure for their users? How hard would it be to auto delete the contents of ~/Library? Or have some periodic auto clean? one can always dream, no?

I wonder how many users that have uninstalled VMware still have 30 gigs of unused VMs lying around on their disk.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#16

Post by fragmede »

kccqzy wrote: post #14
kergonath wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand if the app pulls an Adobe and leaves tons of relatively heavy crap strewn about, yeah it should probably come with an uninstaller. Google is guilty of this sort of things as well. Well, it was anyway at some point. I somehow managed to get rid of everything, including their updater that re-installs itself regardless of what you do to remove it. I wish we had more control over sandboxes so we could…

macOS already has a sandbox. In practice many sandboxed apps can't actually write to /Library or ~/Library. They write to a sandboxed directory that pretends to be ~/Library further containing directories like ~/Library/Application Support. The real path of that directory is generally under ~/Library/Containers. Now for obvious reasons Apple cannot force all macOS apps to be sandboxed. It was already a PR hit when th…

You're also allowed to run macOS VMs on aapple hardware, so once practice is to install sketchy software into a VM where escape is much harder.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#17

Post by dhc02 »

MissTake wrote: post #4
mdmglr wrote: post #2

I recently had to uninstall some apps and it’s common for apps to litter files throughout /Library and ~/Library. The UX from early MacOS days is you can drag/drop the App to the Trash Can to uninstall it. Does MacOS actually clean up the misc. files applications leave at some point?

Nope, still leaves them behind. I’ve been using AppCleaner ( https://freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/ ) for years now and it’s a real neat (and free) app that’ll do a pretty decent job of cleaning up crud.

Worth noting that Raycast does a serviceable job of this all by itself, and you probably already have that if you're reading this here.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#18

Post by drewbitt »

dhc02 wrote: post #17
MissTake wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, still leaves them behind. I’ve been using AppCleaner ( https://freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/ ) for years now and it’s a real neat (and free) app that’ll do a pretty decent job of cleaning up crud.

Worth noting that Raycast does a serviceable job of this all by itself, and you probably already have that if you're reading this here.

Why would I probably have that? Alfred has historically been the far more popular choice. Did I miss a mass exodus?

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#19

Post by lights0123 »

mdmglr wrote: post #2

I recently had to uninstall some apps and it’s common for apps to litter files throughout /Library and ~/Library. The UX from early MacOS days is you can drag/drop the App to the Trash Can to uninstall it. Does MacOS actually clean up the misc. files applications leave at some point?

From the bottom of the linked article, it did so in this case:

    215781406   0x00020200=[removed]    /Users/alin/Library/Application Support/Lunar
    215781409   0x00010200=[removed]    /Users/alin/Library/Preferences/fyi.lunar.Lunar.plist

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#20

Post by jrmg »

tacker2000 wrote: post #15
MissTake wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, still leaves them behind. I’ve been using AppCleaner ( https://freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/ ) for years now and it’s a real neat (and free) app that’ll do a pretty decent job of cleaning up crud.

This is just unbelievable. The billion $$ company cant just automate the uninstall procedure for their users? How hard would it be to auto delete the contents of ~/Library? Or have some periodic auto clean? one can always dream, no? I wonder how many users that have uninstalled VMware still have 30 gigs of unused VMs lying around on their disk.

You can also just run apps from anywhere - network drives, removable disks, disk images etc., so the system can’t just delete settings for apps it’s currently unaware of.
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