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Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

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Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#21

Post by krackers »

timothevs wrote: post #12
tinglymintyfrsh wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I miss disco so much. Back from the Delicious Era [1] of apps that were functional yet had character and play.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2007/05/the-delicious-genera...

I wholly disagree with rogueamoeba's assessment that these were "style over substance". They were dead-simple to use, and you could always disable the smoke if you hated fun. They may not have all the bells and whistles of the bloated 40MB disc burning suite, but if all you wanted to do was burn a linux iso or transfer some songs to stick in your car stereo, this was the go-to tool for the job.

https://weblog.rogueamoeba.com/2006/11/06/

Also I find it ironic that rogueamoeba lambasts the "delicious generation" when I think their Piezo app would fit right into it.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#22

Post by skyyler »

jrmg wrote: post #20
tacker2000 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Revo Uninstaller for windows manages to do this.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#23

Post by mattigames »

jrmg wrote: post #20
tacker2000 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's also Apple's fault isn't it? App data should fall into an predictable folder regardless of the location from where is ran, if for whatever reason the app needs to use a different folder it should be something developers have to go to multiple hurdles to implement (e.g. specify in a manifest what files and where will them be stored, and explicitly specify it they should be automatically deleted or not after moving the app to the trash)

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#24

Post by tough »

drewbitt wrote: post #18
dhc02 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Alfred has been dead for some time, a couple years back I noticed their packal community packages page being broken.

Raycast is the present and future that quicksilver et alfred started.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#25

Post by ok_computer »

question:has anyone succeeded in uninstalling kite (python autocomplete for spyder) at all locations.

I was tricked into selecting to install it one time installing anaconda/spyder. I’ve since removed all of that including anaconda and followed the now scrubbed uninstall instructions on their (defunct kite’s) website.

However a .kite folder keeps showing up in my ~/

I’ve deleted tons of times and searched thru /library and ~/library

I resorted to locking .kite hoping that if some hidden process were using it it won’t have write access anymore. But admittedly I have no idea what’s creating this dir and the reason for it or if I defeated it by locking that .kite folder down.

Thx

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#26

Post by badsectoracula »

mattigames wrote: post #23
jrmg wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's also Apple's fault isn't it? App data should fall into an predictable folder regardless of the location from where is ran, if for whatever reason the app needs to use a different folder it should be something developers have to go to multiple hurdles to implement (e.g. specify in a manifest what files and where will them be stored, and explicitly specify it they should be automatically deleted or not after mov…

Yeah and application bundle proplists could help with that too.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#27

Post by jdminhbg »

mattigames wrote: post #23
jrmg wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's also Apple's fault isn't it? App data should fall into an predictable folder regardless of the location from where is ran, if for whatever reason the app needs to use a different folder it should be something developers have to go to multiple hurdles to implement (e.g. specify in a manifest what files and where will them be stored, and explicitly specify it they should be automatically deleted or not after mov…

> That's also Apple's fault isn't it?

Sure, but if they locked things down the way you’re proposing, people would absolutely lose their minds about the iOSification of macOS.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#28

Post by crazygringo »

jrmg wrote: post #20
tacker2000 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah I think the real problem is that deleting an app isn't uninstalling (which is sometimes a feature not a bug), but Apple provides no paradigm for actually uninstalling that deletes preferences too.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#29

Post by rcarr »

tough wrote: post #24
drewbitt wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Alfred has been dead for some time, a couple years back I noticed their packal community packages page being broken. Raycast is the present and future that quicksilver et alfred started.

This is complete bullshit. Alfred 5.0 was released in July last year and the last update 5.0.6 was in December. Packal is online and a couple of packages were updated 1 week 6 days ago. And not only that, but to replicate most of Alfred's functionality in Raycast, you have to rely on plugins and hope they are both secure and maintained by somebody whereas Alfred's functionality is maintained by the Alfred team. Stop spreading misinformation.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#30

Post by programmarchy »

ok_computer wrote: post #25

question:has anyone succeeded in uninstalling kite (python autocomplete for spyder) at all locations. I was tricked into selecting to install it one time installing anaconda/spyder. I’ve since removed all of that including anaconda and followed the now scrubbed uninstall instructions on their (defunct kite’s) website. However a .kite folder keeps showing up in my ~/ I’ve deleted tons of times and searched thru /libra…

There’s probably an assistant program starting at login. Maybe check in ~/Library/LaunchAgents and /Library/LaunchAgents
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