Uninstalling Apps

[13]

It depends on the application. Some you can just drag the app the the trash from the applications folder, however some applications install additional things elsewhere on the hard drive.

[Yehuda Brandriss]

Exactly what I mean, Draging the app to the trash does not uninstall the program, it only gets rid of the icon, all the info and prefernces are still sitting on the drive. Thats why I want to know if there is a way to do a full uninstall.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Yes, but for most programs those files are generally under 5 MB and they’re totally inert. They don’t DO anything. On a Windows machine you’d have the program leave marks on the registry which would slow down the computer sometimes, but that’s not the case on the Mac. All your losing is the hard drive space, which is pretty small. The files left behind are nver again used by the computer. So just leave them alone.

If you REALLY want to get rid of them, erase the program and then empty the trash. Then use Spotlight to search for the program. Any files or folders that you still find at that point…erase them.

That’s all you have to do. It should take about a minute. I’d do it for large programs like Final Cut Pro since it may leave large files behind. But something like “Fetch” or “Handbrake?” I wouldn’t even worry about it after I erased the program from the Application folder. At that point the program itself is gone and that’s all I care about.

[Enge]

Hi,
I use an App. called “AppDelete”. It was a free D/L from the Apple OSX downloads page, it promises to delete not only the application but any preference files and extra bits that are affiliated with the application you want to delete. I’ve had a good success rate with it too. You need to take care though, don’t really want to be deleting the wrong thing now!!!

Enge