10/9/2019 How To Delete An App On Macbook
Got an app that doesn’t seem to delete or keeps reappearing? You may have a virus or malware on your Mac – these are possible to accidentally catch on Mac and you’ll want to check out this article from MacWorld on how to remove them from your MacBook. What’s your preferred method for removing apps on your MacBook Pro?
Problem: A file is being used by another app or process If you’re getting a ‘File in use’ message whenever you try and drag a file to the Trash, that means an app or process is currently using this file. You’ll need to hunt down the culprit, and close it.
Start by checking what apps you have open and closing any that you suspect might be accessing the file in question, then try deleting the file again. If you’re still seeing the ‘File in use’ message, then it’s time to take a closer look at exactly what’s running on your MacBook, by launching the Activity monitor app (‘Applications’ ‘Utilities’ ‘Activity Monitor).
In Activity Monitor, select either the ‘CPU’ or ‘Memory’ tab and spend some time exploring the list of currently-running apps and processes. Could any of these be using the file you’re trying to delete? If you spot a likely candidate, then select it and give Activity Monitor’s ‘Quit Process’ icon a click.
Just be wary of closing a process when you don’t fully understand what that process does, as some processes are essential to the smooth running of your Mac. If you’re unsure, then do some research by entering the name of the mystery process into your favourite search engine and exploring some of the results.
Problem: The file is locked If you’re getting a ‘File is locked’ message, then you’ll need to unlock that file before you can delete it:. Control-click the file in your Finder. Select ‘Get Info’ from the menu that appears.
Expand the ‘General’ section, if it isn’t expanded already. Deselect the ‘Locked’ checkbox.
If the ‘Locked’ checkbox is greyed out, then this means you don’t have permission to modify the file (we look at how to change a file’s permissions in the next section, so skip ahead if you can’t currently access the ‘Locked’ checkbox). You can also unlock a file using the Terminal that comes pre-installed on every MacBook. To launch Terminal, click the ‘Spotlight’ icon in your MacBook’s menu bar and enter ‘Terminal’ into the search bar that appears. This launches the Terminal window. Input the following command (being sure to replace location/nameoffile.extension with your own filename and file path) and hit the ‘Enter’ key on your keyboard: chflags nouchg location/nameoffile.extension Once the file is unlocked, you should be able to go ahead with the delete.
You don’t have permission to access the file Permissions can prevent you from deleting a file in two ways:. The file is locked, and you don’t have permission to unlock it. You see an error message whenever you try to delete the file. To get permission to modify a file, Control-click the file in question and select ‘Get Info.’ In the ‘Get Info’ window, find the ‘Sharing & Permissions’ section and expand it. Here you’ll find a list of all the user accounts associated with your MacBook, along with each account’s permissions regarding this specific file: Read Only, Read & Write, or No Access. If you spot a padlock icon in the bottom-right of this menu, then you’ll need to click it and enter your admin password before you can make any changes. Find your user account in the list, click its corresponding set of arrow icons and select ‘Read & Write’ from the dropdown menu.
You now have permission to modify this file – and that includes unlocking the file, and deleting it. If all else fails: Force Delete If the file is unlocked and you have read and write permissions, but you’re still struggling to delete the file, then you can force-delete it by issuing Terminal commands.
Just be aware that when you force-delete something, it gets permanently deleted as soon as you hit the ‘Enter’ key. There’s no way to recover a force-deleted file! The Terminal can also delete files you wouldn’t normally be able to remove, and sometimes there’s a very good reason why MacOS tries to prevent you from deleting something. Before going ahead with a force-delete, consider whether removing this file might have a negative impact on other applications, or even your MacBook as a whole. If you’re unsure, then it’s always best to err on the side of caution and either leave the file well alone, or make a full backup before proceeding with the force-delete, so you have something to restore if it all goes wrong. To force-delete a file, open the Terminal (either by performing a Spotlight search for the word “Terminal,” or by going to ApplicationsUtilitiesTerminal).
Then, type the following into the Terminal but don’t press the ‘Enter’ key: rm - Drag the file you want to delete onto the Terminal, as this will automatically add the filename and its entire path to the Terminal command (a handy shortcut!) Double-check that this really is the file you want to force-delete, then hit the ‘Enter’ key. This command works on files only, so if you’re struggling to delete a directory you’ll need to enter a different command. To delete an empty directory, use: rmdir location/directoryname To delete a directory plus all of its contents, run: rm -R /Users/jessicathornsby/Desktop/mydirectory Since this removes the entire contents of the directory and all its subfolders, it’s always a good idea to explore every part of the directory before running rm -R, just to make sure there’s nothing you want to hang onto. Problem: The Trash Won’t Empty Sometimes, a file may make it as far as the Trash and then get stuck there. Maybe you’re clicking ‘Empty Trash’ and it seems to be working, but when you open the Trash folder you realise that it either hasn’t emptied at all, or that one or more files have been left behind. Alternatively, maybe everytime you try and empty the Trash you get an error message, something along the files of “Operation cannot be completed because.” Whatever Trash-related issues you’re experiencing, you can often resolve this issue by performing a ‘Force Empty.’ To invoke this feature, simply hold the ‘Option’ key while selecting the regular ‘Empty Trash’ option. Alternatively, if you know which file is preventing the Trash from emptying as normal, then you may want to look into why this particular file is causing problems.
Find the file in your Trash folder, then Control-click it and select ‘Get Info.’ Check whether the file is locked, and whether you have ‘Read & Write’ permissions for that file, as both of these can interfere with the Trash can’s normal operations. If none of these techniques work, then you can force-delete files that are already in the Trash, using the Terminal. Point the Terminal at your Trash folder: cd /.Trash Then tell it which file to delete: rm - filename.jpg How to Delete System Apps You may have noticed that a new MacBook is never truly a blank slate, as every Apple product comes pre-loaded with Apple apps, such as Safari, Mail, FaceTime and Photos. While you may use some of these apps on a day-to-day basis, chances are you won’t use all of them. Maybe you prefer a non-Apple alternative, such as Chrome, or maybe you simply have no use for a particular app – I can honestly say I’ve never launched the Chess app that came with my MacBook! Any apps you don’t use just sit around, taking up space and cluttering your ‘Applications’ folder for no good reason, however if you’ve ever tried to uninstall a system app, you’ll know that it’s impossible to delete them the normal way. In this section, I’m going to show you how to uninstall any app, including system apps.
But first, consider whether removing the app you have in your crosshairs is likely to have a serious impact on other applications, or even the operating system itself. If you do decide to go ahead, then you may want to take some extra precautions by creating a full backup first. In order to delete any of your MacBook’s default apps, you’ll need to temporarily disable System Integrity Protection (SIP), which is something you should never do lightly. SIP is designed to help protect your MacBook from malware by preventing anyone from accessing and modifying system files, so if you do disable SIP then you should make the effort to delete your system apps and re-enable SIP as quickly as possible. To disable SIP, boot into Recovery by restarting your Mac and holding the ‘Command-R’ buttons until you see the Apple logo and progress bar. Once in Recovery mode, open the ‘Utilities’ menu, select ‘Terminal’ and enter the following command: csrutil disable You’ll see a message that SIP has been disabled. At this point, you can modify your system files, so exit Recovery mode and restart your MacBook as normal.
Open the Terminal and point it at your ‘Applications’ directory: cd /Applications/ You can now delete any app, by running the following command: sudo rm -rf Chess.app/ Enter your admin password when prompted, and that’s it – the app will be permanently deleted. As soon as you’ve finished deleting apps, you should re-enable SIP by booting into Recovery, opening the Terminal and running the following command: csrutil enable You’ll see a message confirming that SIP is back up and running, which means your MacBook once again has an extra layer of protection against malware.
Quick question – how do you remove an app on your Mac? If your answer is to drag the app to the Trash, we’re sorry to say that you’ve been doing it wrong. You probably know or guess that you can remove apps by dragging them to the Trash bin, but it is not quite so. Dragging normal files like documents and movies to the Trash works fine.
But doing the same for apps leaves gigabytes of leftover junk files on your hard drive. We’re going to show you what gets left behind and what you can do to completely uninstall apps from here on out. How to completely uninstall software on Mac Removing apps is more than just moving them to the Trash — it’s completely uninstalling them.
If you are trying to delete an old application, reinstall a corrupted software or just free up disk space on your Mac, removing all components of the program is important. These include the app, its preferences and support files, and sometimes other hidden files. To completely uninstall a program on Mac you have to choose one of three options:.
Using Trash. Using Launchpad. Using CleanMyMac X (the easy way). We’re going to show you how to manually uninstall a program on Mac and then we’ll also show you the easy way. The easy way to remove apps involves a Mac uninstaller app, which will remove any app you want while also cleaning up the associated files spread across your hard drive and system. How to force delete an app on a Mac? That’s another problem that a quality uninstaller can solve.
We’ll show you how to use the module in CleanMyMac X. It’s the safest option because it guarantees that the right files are deleted every time, so you never have a problem down the line. As a bonus, we’ll also show you how to uninstall the apps that you’ve forgotten are even there.
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Things like Java, Flash, and other extensions that are hard to find. Are you ready to uninstall Mac apps for good and clean up your system? Then let’s go! Delete apps using the Trash Whether you're running macOS Mojave or an earlier OS X, like El Capitan or Yosemite, the process of manually uninstalling remains relatively similar. Even uninstalling apps on macOS Mojave requires getting rid of leftovers, despite the fact that it's the latest and the most sophisticated system for Mac. Apple has done such a good job on macOS 10.14 but left this unfortunate issue unresolved for another year.
To completely remove programs from Mac manually, you have to find all the associated files that come along with the app. That means not just dragging the app icon to the Trash from your Applications folder, but searching the depths of the system files in your Mac. We’re going to reveal the locations of the most common files that are associated with apps. To remove the app leftovers from your Mac just navigate to each of these folders and hunt for the app you want to remove. If you find files with the app name you can send them to the Trash.
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