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Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

notes.alinpanaitiu.com

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Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#151

Post by [deleted] »

ThePowerOfFuet wrote: post #104
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…

> Also, "uninstallable" means "cannot be installed" It means both cannot be installed and can be uninstalled, depending on context.

[deleted]

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#152

Post by steve1977 »

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?

The UX from early Mac OS X days would actually be to either have a self-reliant app bundle that you can simply trash or a pkg-based installer which would leave a so called receipt and ideally an uninstaller.

A UX for a more civilized age…

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#153

Post by ravagat »

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.

+1 for AppCleaner, came here to suggest it but here it is

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#154

Post by Hackbraten »

michelb wrote: post #148
Hackbraten wrote: post #86

Last time I checked, you could use `brew uninstall --cask --force --zap` to uninstall an app thoroughly. That would work reliably for me, even for installs not actually managed by Homebrew.

Does this also remove user preferences and config files?

Yes, it does. But not user-generated data files.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#155

Post by plq »

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…

> Also, "uninstallable" means "cannot be installed"

Nope. In writing, it's technically ambiguous -- it could mean both "can't be installed" or "can't be uninstalled" but to me it means "can't be uninstalled". In spoken language, it depends how you stress the first syllable and both could be used, I guess.

That's why if you want to denote the installability of something, you should use the nonambiguous installable-noninstallable pair and leave the word "uninstallable" for the "can't be uninstalled" meaning. AFAICT, whether you should spell it as "non-installable" or "noninstallable" (note the hyphen) is up to you.

Again, in my personal experience, uninstallable definitely means 2 in [1]: "uninstall-able". Pretty sure I never saw that word used as "un-installable".

[1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/uninstallable

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#156

Post by aflag »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #5
alin23 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never had macOS remove those files automatically when dragging the app to the trash. I still have files left from 4 MacBooks ago (for apps I haven’t installed in a long time) because I’m always migrating the home folder. 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. They’re inert…

> 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…

Having all those files around from an app I've used long ago feels really untindy to me. Even though, practically, it's ok. It still bothers. Feels like if you dispose of some old stuff by throwing them on the roof. Even though it works, it feels messy.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#157

Post by rawTruthHurts »

eviks wrote: post #92
AbusiveHNAdmin wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The Windows apologists are non the wiser :). Windows still has no full uninstaller that can clean the registry droppings many apps leave and other files, requiring to use specialized apps for that. And sometimes it would also fail to uninstall the binary. And Windows bizarely needs to retain the huge installers, so that part is strictly worse vs Mac

But we were not lied to in that regard.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#158

Post by daneel_w »

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?

>"I recently had to uninstall some apps and it’s common for apps to litter files throughout /Library and ~/Library."

For ~/Library your application may often put its preferences in ~/Library/Preferences/ and partly in ~/Library/Application\ Support/. That's entirely normal and expected. But, no, for /Library that's absolutely not common. Very few applications run as an actual "installer" and even fewer of those request admin privileges. But it is annoying those few times some software actually does it. At the least you can always tidy it up yourself on the command line.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#159

Post by stiGGG »

angulardragon03 wrote: post #138
alin23 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those aren’t app files, they are user configuration files. They can’t be created inside the app bundle because the app is signed, and any modification will invalidate the signature. There’s also the matter of permissions, some apps may be installed by the admin, but the app might not run with admin permissions for some users.

Also having your app data stored within a bundle that (during updates) is literally just removed and replaced would lead to data loss. I don’t think there is any system that actually stores app data within/next to the binary itself.

That was quite common during the Windows 9x days, leading to that long period of time of problems later under XP with old apps only running under an admin account.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#160

Post by vetinari »

qalmakka wrote: post #144
nihilius wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Flatpak applications under Linux get their little sandboxes under ~/.var/app/$application-id where they can create whatever they want and the user can remove it from there when needed. Except for that, any other path that the app can access is decleared in the permissions; or the user is very well aware, because he picked the file via filechooser (portal).

Soma macOS applications can use similar scheme, under ~/Library/Containers/$application-id, but for the user more difficult to know which one is supposed to and which isn't.

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