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Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

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Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#141

Post by nihilius »

pfp wrote: post #33
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.

No. The user data, preferences etc under ~/Library/ belong to you - whether it's 3 kB of preference toggles or 3 decades of email. It would be "unbelievable" if a multibillion company decided to be helpful and erase your data just because you deleted the binary that created them (actually, it wouldn't, but let's not digress into how those companies are stripping away our agency by mobile-ossifying everything). The wh…

In Ubuntu i can do apt remove to just uninstall the binary or i can apt purge to remove config files as well. Is there an native macOS equivalent for this?

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#142

Post by inferiorhuman »

leonidasv wrote: post #97
pfp wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The user data, preferences etc under ~/Library/ belong to you - whether it's 3 kB of preference toggles or 3 decades of email. It would be "unbelievable" if a multibillion company decided to be helpful and erase your data just because you deleted the binary that created them (actually, it wouldn't, but let's not digress into how those companies are stripping away our agency by mobile-ossifying everything). The wh…

When I delete an app on an iPhone, all its data is also deleted. Gone. Why can't it be the same for the Mac? That's what the average end-user understands by removing an app from the system nowadays.

  When I delete an app on an iPhone, all its data is also deleted. Gone.
Nope. Delete your Google apps. Reinstall one. It'll still pick up the accounts you used prior. Well, it used to anyways. It's not an iCloud keychain thing (or it wasn't).

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/441112/how-can-i-r...

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/332574/deleting-an...

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#143

Post by newaccount74 »

fastball wrote: post #122
newaccount74 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can always drop the check entirely I don't think you can? Unless I am missing something? You can add Terminal to "developer tools" so you can launch stuff from the shell without Gatekeeper interfering, but is there really a way to disable the gatekeeper warning for downloaded apps altogether?

Yes you can turn of gatekeeper entirely just by running this in the Terminal. sudo spctl --master-disable

I've just tried that, and I still get the gatekeeper warning, so it doesn't seem to work anymore on macOS Ventura.

Executing the command does make the "Anywhere" option show up in System Settings, but from testing it doesn't seem that this option makes a difference.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#144

Post by qalmakka »

nihilius wrote: post #141
pfp wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The user data, preferences etc under ~/Library/ belong to you - whether it's 3 kB of preference toggles or 3 decades of email. It would be "unbelievable" if a multibillion company decided to be helpful and erase your data just because you deleted the binary that created them (actually, it wouldn't, but let's not digress into how those companies are stripping away our agency by mobile-ossifying everything). The wh…

In Ubuntu i can do apt remove to just uninstall the binary or i can apt purge to remove config files as well. Is there an native macOS equivalent for this?

The package manager will never attempt to clear stuff under user's home directories, just like macOS will not clear stuff under ~/Library. The package manager doesn't and cannot know what content an application has created while in use. Only the application itself knows that.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#145

Post by newaccount74 »

ayewo wrote: post #126
newaccount74 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can always drop the check entirely I don't think you can? Unless I am missing something? You can add Terminal to "developer tools" so you can launch stuff from the shell without Gatekeeper interfering, but is there really a way to disable the gatekeeper warning for downloaded apps altogether?

> You can add Terminal to "developer tools" so you can launch stuff from the shell without Gatekeeper interfering ... How does that work? I use iTerm so how would I add it to "developer tools"?

Go to System Settings -> Privacy & Security -> Developer Tools and add iTerm.

If the Developer Tools section isn't visible, this command should fix it [1]:

    spctl developer-mode enable-terminal
[1]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60176405/macos-catalina-...

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#146

Post by vbezhenar »

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.

No desktop OS has uninstall procedures. Both Windows and Linux software packages often will leave trash files scattered around as well.

The only sane way to use desktop OS that I've found is to reinstall everything every 6-12 months and having some backup procedures to speed up configuration process.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#147

Post by vbezhenar »

miked85 wrote: post #35
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.

They are too busy working on allowing Safari to maximize as expected.

What're you talking about? Did Safari implement maximize functionality? Incredible if it's true.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#149

Post by mschuster91 »

pilif wrote: post #74
Aloha wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most windows installers do not bother to clean up /Program Data or ~/AppData Nor do most linux programs remove dot files when they go away.

Especially ~/AppData (and ~/Library) is problematic because the person uninstalling the app might not be the person who was previously using the app. Reaching into another account‘s home directory to remove stuff feels very intrusive. Which would mean that any uninstall trying to also clean out library data is going to be incomplete. I think the consistent behavior of always keeping it is a win

Some uninstallers do ask you if you wish to retain configuration clutter.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#150

Post by shp0ngle »

krackers wrote: post #21
timothevs wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

The delicious era … it was nice to “be there”, but honestly, I always felt like it was too much glossy. And I usually missed some feature there and felt back to the “boring” apps.

And I mean, Delicious Library… it looks good, but… why would I scan everything I have, to look at it on my Mac? What’s the point. I never understood it even back then.

But yeah, GUIs from that era were amazing, and then moved to iOS in the first iterations, with all the skeuomorphism. It all died with the move to the new flat designs I guess.

Today Mac apps are just mostly Electron/swiftui and boring.

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