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Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

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Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#181

Post by dhc02 »

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?

Haha that's almost exactly the reaction I had about two weeks ago. "What is everybody talking about?" But then I tried it and yep, I think it's a bit better overall, while there are a couple of little things I'd say I sometimes miss.

The good thing is they're not mutually exclisive, so I've been running both and seeing which one I reach for.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#182

Post by idianal »

As mentioned elsewhere, the trusted workaround is AppCleaner (https://freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/). I just wish it was open source.

An attempt at an open source AppCleaner, I worked on a script, called zap (https://github.com/idianal/zap), that aims to replicate much of the same functionality (without a GUI). The benefit for users is they can see exactly what it is doing on their computer.

Here I outline the limitations: https://idian.io/posts/2022/writing-an-app-uninstaller-for-m....

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#183

Post by smoldesu »

sbuk wrote: post #137
smoldesu wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely, citing the benefits of a broken system does not justify it's existence. Thousands of good things happen in broken systems, but that doesn't justify their failure points. If Apple had effective processes that allowed for constructive solutions to this problem, we wouldn't be here today. Instead, we see Apple fighting regulators in Dutch court, ducking regulatory fines and funneling developers into a ancill…

It isn’t broken. The fact is that you and the other posters simply don’t like or even don’t grok it. So you climb your ivory tower to declare that emperor is not wearing any clothes. It’s trite, and it’s boring and it’s lowering the quality of discourse.

The broken system is not the uninstall process, it's the rift between Apple's services (the App Store) and MacOS as a development target. It extends to the iPhone, and it's such a restrictive and arbitrary process that Apple is being forced to reconsider it in Europe. You cannot sustain a system where you neglect OS-level features like software management to prop-up your SaaS distribution service.

Pragmatic interpretation of the issue at hand doesn't lower the quality of discourse at all. We only veer off into ivory tower territory when people claim that other people's experiences are illegitimate, and then deny the problem because they're not personally impacted.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#184

Post by joshspankit »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #11
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…

> 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…

There’s one legitimate dev gripe that Apple has yet to solve properly:

Storage of (paid) license data.

Apple deals with it for first party apps by tying licenses to the App Store, but for any company who chooses to distribute themselves a true sandbox means they cannot store license data or even worse: they have to store it “out in the open” (which is to say: in a location that’s obvious and where piraters can start to reverse-engineer it).

Now, to be clear: I’m very much on the camp of “security through obscurity is not security at all”, but what I am saying is that there’s a significant and legitimate unsolved problem for devs to gripe about when it comes to sandboxes and restrictions.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#185

Post by joshspankit »

klodolph wrote: post #81
bitwize wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait wat So macOS is as shitty as Windows in terms of app install? Anyway, accepted wisdom now is that applications should only run containerized, which would make uninstall as simple as deleting the container.

It’s really not. The stuff in ~/Library is caches + preferences + any other data. Deleting an app on macOS, even back in the day, did not delete the preferences. The problems with Windows is that you needed an installer in the first place, and then an uninstaller, and then you couldn’t move an application to a different location. On a Mac, you can still just drag the application to the /Applications folder, or somewh…

I mean, it almost is.

Though, it depends on the software of course. I’ve seen some bad-faith macOS installs that easily compete with bad-faith Windows installs.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#186

Post by joshspankit »

tzhenghao wrote: post #75
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?

What bothers me even more is the fact that nowadays newly installed apps even need to "ask user for permission to access the {Documents, Downloads, Desktop, ...} folders". This is especially true when using a new terminal emulator like iTerm or Alacritty

If you mean it bothers you because you just want it to work then you’re arguing for apps to be able to litter and scrape however they want and I disagree. If it bothers you because good-faith applications are asking for permission as they’re supposed to but bad-faith ones are getting around those permissions and doing what they want anyway, I agree.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#187

Post by easeout »

DavideNL wrote: post #170
goalieca wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do on iOS.

Unfortunately, they don’t. There are many apps which after uninstalling, and reinstalling them weeks later, prompt you with: “Hello David, welcome back”, etc. I need to login again etc. (cache was cleared) but my settings are still there. This happens even when deleting the app from ALL devices connected to my AppleID.

On iOS the Documents and Library folders exist per application in a sandbox, so those can be deleted with the app binary. Preferences like location permissions are reset too. But some things persist, like the app's related keychain data, which might contain a user session. Apps have the choice of where they store things and therefore what behavior to give users in a delete and reinstall scenario.

Of course any files saved in iCloud Drive or "On my iPhone" stay put, which users would expect.

I think the value of retaining the keychain is related to 1. automatically deleting least recently used apps and restoring them when a user goes to launch them, and 2. restoring from encrypted backups, in which the downloaded apps are not backed up themselves, slowly install after the restore completes, and find the keychain data waiting for them.

If I recall, not all methods of backup include the keychain, which I think was the difference between having to sign into every app again or just a few due to a new device's Secure Enclave. These days if you get a new device you'll have a much better time with the phone-to-phone migration assistant then a backup and restore.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#188

Post by AbusiveHNAdmin »

daneel_w wrote: post #162
AbusiveHNAdmin wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'll help you out by offering this common scenario: You have an application which is a normal app bundle. It doesn't update itself because, well, few developers have bothered taking this route, so you download a new version of it and you throw the old one in the trash. Now all of your preferences are gone and you have to set everything up again. That would not be a pleasant user experience, would it. Dropping the bun…

I agree. How is that "helping me out?" I never said dragging stuff to the trash should do that. I said there should be an UNINSTALLER, which is the whole topic at hand here.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#189

Post by AbusiveHNAdmin »

andirk wrote: post #90
AbusiveHNAdmin wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You're not supposed to speak unkind of Apple products [0] or its peripherals North Face, Patagonia. How is any operating system supposed to log everything an application does and then remove it? If it's allowed to add data beyond its birth directory, would not an "uninstaller" only remove whatever the devs chose to and not 100% of its effect on the OS? [0] https://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/30/39-apple-product.…

It isn't supposed to, of course. But there should be a standard facility offered by the OS that well-behaved apps can use to install components, through which the OS WILL log each of them and be able to remove them later.

The main challenge is shared libraries; these are hard to delete reliably, even if the installer keeps a "use count" that it can increment and decrement. Just one non-compliant dependency will be broken if you remove all the compliant ones and a lib it needs gets blown away.

Re: Making macOS Apps Uninstallable

#190

Post by plq »

swashbuck1r wrote: post #166
plq wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-non…

The ambiguous uninstallable meanings would be: * cannot be installed * can be uninstalled The Wikipedia link you posted agrees with that interpretation. I think “can’t be uninstalled” would be “non-uninstallable”.

Ah yes, of course. A "mental" typo from my part, I guess.
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