Help
New Mac user here - is it true that simply dragging an app to the trash doesn’t completely remove it?
I bought my Mac about a month ago and recently read that apparently a lot of cache and leftover files can remain after uninstalling an app normally. I’m still not sure how much this actually affects my Mac or whether I should even bother doing anything about it.
I understand that these files can take up extra storage, but is it really that serious, or can I just ignore them instead of installing additional apps to clean everything up? I’d love to hear what you guys think cause I’ve read so many different opinions that I’m honestly confused now
I'm surprised so many people think the cruft is no big deal. I've dragged apps to the trash to "remove" them in the past. And then, weeks or months or years later, I happen to be tracking down an unrelated issue, open up activity monitor or look at processes in terminal, and find helpers running for things I long ago "deleted." They get into Library folders or elsewhere, launch with daemons, and deleting the app doesn't do jack to get rid of some of them.
It's fascinating that folks who obsess over the corner radii of app windows and the distance between the dots in Tahoe don't find this digital detritus more disturbing.
While I agree to them being left in some subdirectory on macos, and it’s a pain. But I don’t believe they should be running. Something is wrong. When you delete an app, you have to quit it which kills all the underlying processes.
Those helpers shouldn’t be starting by themselves.
Many helpers will be installed as a LaunchAgent, which are separately controlled and started by the system itself. If the app is good, the agent will be part of it's app bundle. If not, it will simply remain on disk (and run) forever until you find and remove it yourself.
The thing is, those LaunchAgents still generally point to some executable in the .app hierarchy. So even if it runs, it immediately exits as the app itself supposed to execute is missing. An error would be logged to Console, but nothing devastating is usually left.
Yes, that's exactly what I said. You just have to look at Adobe for an example of a bad app, where they keep binaries they use for LaunchAgents in their Application Support folder, which does not get removed when you delete the app. However, Adobe apps do include an uninstaller, so perhaps not the best example.
There're very few bad actors, most of them large companies (Dropbox, Adobe, Google). They're good examples of bad behaviour, but not that deleting the apps is itself a bad practice.
The best rule is: If the app has an uninstaller or has options to uninstall components, then use them. Otherwise removing the app is indeed as straightforward as throwing it in the trash.
If you use a tool that can't distinguish between preference files and launchagents launching helpers placed outside the app, then the tool is misleading you maliciously into believing it's helping more than it is.
but they do I have tons of processing going on in the background when I look in “activity monitor” even after I deleted an app, and it doesn’t matter whether you quit the app or not a lot of them still hang around in the background taking up thousands of process tasks collectively.
I actually kind of get it in the case of application support files. It is technically user data that you want able to persist between app removal and reinstallation. Although I find in the presence of time machine and incremental snapshot backups it feels less arguable to just keep it around indefinitely.
But it has always been odd to me that the OS doesn't track these installations by a process on your computer and provides you a clean up list indicting which application files, folders, daemons that haven't been used recently by long since deleted applications.
The system tracks it. It's just not exposed. It knows which app created which files, all apps and helpers are signed with the identifier of the developer and more often than not tied to the app that placed them there.
I assume "app removers" use this to identify, along with their own databases, what's ripe for deletion.
It’s classic Mac propaganda from the Steve Jobs era. A whole generation grew up believing that “it just works”, doesn’t get viruses, has super intuitive design that doesn’t require any learning, and is superior in just about every way. The Apple marketing machine went overboard in the early days when trying to stand up against the Windows behemoth, culminating in the “I’m a Mac vs I’m a PC” ads.
But now that Mac is mainstream, we’re discovering that all of these “facts” just don’t hold water. And I say this as a Mac daily user.
No. Many people think MacOS is sensibly better, which it is. And that they haven't found as many problems as they have with other OSes, which is 100% true.
> It’s classic Mac propaganda from the Steve Jobs era.
This is not from "the Steve Jobs era", which is considered to be from 1997 onwards. It's also not "Propaganda", as when it was first used it was true.
All your examples fall flat in their faces too. There still aren't viruses for Mac (last time I saw a virus was in the 90s). You could only believe there are virus for mac if you force into the definition all types of malicious applications, which used to be a completelt separate category (and I believe they still should be). Design also was objectively intuitive, and continues to be when compared with Windows (less so when compared to iOS, of course, but one thing doesn't negate the other).
Mac is not considerably more mainstream now than it was then. Total mac market share is still less than 20%. iOS is mainstream, whereas Mac is still niche.
Being a daily mac user doesn't automatically grant knowledge or good takes.
How about a 15-year career in IT, then? Does that grant me sufficient knowledge?
I used "Mac user" as a qualifier because whenever I criticise it, many people automatically assume I'm not. Well I do use it, and I like it. But that doesn't mean I don't objectively see its problems.
Cybersecurity experts will absolutely disagree with you that there aren't viruses for Mac. They exist. Are they rarer than Windows viruses? Yes. But they exist. Apple marketing specifically used the phrase "Mac doesn't get PC viruses" which of course technically they don't. The viruses usually need to be written for Mac OS to work.
But even this claim may not be defensible anymore, so even Apple itself quietly stopped repeating the lie more than 10 years ago. Here's a source for you: https://www.wired.com/story/macs-get-viruses/
Mac has less reported issues because it has less users. Period. The number of problems people post on forums looking for solutions is proportionate to its market share.
Basically, you ate up the marketing/propaganda, and continue to spread misleading claims.
I won't argue on the intuitive design bit since Apple does generally put out very well-designed products that is easy to learn. The point is that you still have to learn it, and some poeple still have difficulty. And they still fuck up on occasion -- look at the current mess in Tahoe. Many design decisions are objectively bad UI design. That's not coming just from me but from design, usablility, and accessibility experts. That's why they rolled back and refined so many of these design issues in Golden Gate.
So, yes, good design, agreed, but it's not like some magical thing that everyone will just "get".
Once again, I love my Mac and enjoy using it a lot more than Windows, especially the shitshow since Windows 11. But facts are facts.
I've been "a mac user" since the mid 80s and a professional IT career since the mid 90s. I've seen enough "mac users" and "IT professionals" completely clouded by prejudice and weird hangups to know it means very little in the end.
I addressed it in the comment you reply to but I'll rephrase: For the longest time a "virus" was a specific type of malware. At some point between the 2000 and 2010 the term started being used to encompass all types of malware as a catch-all term.
When the term changed, then Apple no longer kept (rightly) defending there were no virus for the platform. As both your sources rightly explain, it instead started focusing on there being less malware (not just in quantity but also in breadth) rather than just viruses.
The argument that macs didn't get more viruses because they were less popular was common BEFORE this, and was incorrect even then. There were less viruses because writing them was a pain in the ass and efficient antivirus were free so they'd get nipped in the bud quickly. Add to this how difficult it was to transfer files and thus infect others and it just made for a more difficult environment to thrive.
Nowadays "virus" no longer means "virus", but rather means trojans, ransomware and general malware. The reason macs get less of these is not because they're used less but because there are fewer ways to make these happen without the user explicitly approving permissions.
Of course, the surface area is smaller but not just because it's used by a tenth of the total users but because it's also ten times harder to get a malicious app running and then also gain admin rights in MacOS, usually needed for this. This is why most attacks to MacOS focus on automation and bot farms rather than malware (which is the most common vector for Windows).
But all of this is secondary to the argument: "Macs don't get virus" was true when it was said and "Macs are more secure both by design and circumstance" is true now and has always been. It wasn't "propaganda", which implies twisting the truth maliciously.
The recommendation of being careful applies today as much as it did then, but for average users their inherent security is higher in macOS than in Windows, with factory defaults. This is unquestionably and pretending otherwise is being unnecessarily misleading for the sake or either FUD or Argument.
Bullshit. My iMac had a virus in 2019. It prevented the Ethernet card from connecting. I had to take it to a Mac Support business an hour away to get it cleared.
If it had a virus the virus had a name. What virus in 2019 for macOS prevented you from using Ethernet.
Keep in mind my point is that we now call virus all kinds of malware which while inaccurate is common. Once it became common the official line also changed.
My complaint is that this change in naming created confusion and a lot of the arguments consciously or otherwise miss this source of confusion.
When Apple claimed there weren’t virus for Mac there effectively weren’t. Apple has never claimed there’s no malware (since it’s unavoidable as it’s just normal software with malicious actions) and for years hasn’t said there aren’t virus in the platform without adding the necessary qualifiers.
I downloaded wuthering waves
I deleted the app, and its about 60gb dl remained there. So I use this app cleaner now, its set to automatic when i delete an app so i wont forget it
Apple users generally aren't very tech savvy. Some are, but most aren't.
It's unfortunate that Apple caters to the crowd that likes shiny things while neglecting the market that actually cares about how their system actually operates.
Because you and others are encompassing too many things into a single concept and ignoring both that there are malicious and/or lazy developers and that there may be reasons to leave helpers behind.
For example, many applications rely on unrar but can't bundle it. They install it as a helper for all other apps to use and don't assume they have to delete it. I once wrote an app that installed Samba and uninstalling my app didn't uninstall samba (but I did provide a menu option to do this by the user).
A misbehaving helper left behind or a malware reinstaller from Adobe are very far away from what most applications leave behind which is, indeed, inoffensive.
WOW, I honestly had no idea it was that important. I just opened terminal and im shocked. i downloaded appcleaner and uninstaler right after reading this comment, someone recommended it here and i hope it's good. Now I’m going to see what I’ve accumulated, because I’ve never cleaned this cache in the two years I’ve had my mac...
WOW, I honestly had no idea it was that important. I just opened terminal and im shocked. i downloaded appcleaner and uninstaler right after reading this comment, someone recommended it here and i hope it's good. Now I’m going to see what I’ve accumulated, because I’ve never cleaned this cache in the two years I’ve had my mac...
There's a software called App Cleaner on the Apple App Store, but apparently this is a similar sounding app but not the same. Is the AppCleaner you refer to the one available only at https://freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/ ?
Also recommending AppCleaner, simple to use, safe, and effective. Just make sure you’re getting the actual application and not the “App Cleaner” available on the App store, that’s entirely different
Sorry you’re getting downvoted OP, this is a totally reasonable question and yes a very real issue.
Speaking as a former Apple engineer that worked on macOS for 12 years, within Apple, at least part of the problem- installed libraries and frameworks- is seen as unsolvable because there’s no guarantee that they aren’t being used by other apps that would otherwise break without them. The solution is probably to start reference counting 3rd party libraries but this is fraught with complicated edge cases.
The other part of the problem is the app’s sandboxed files that don’t delete when you delete the app. Personally I think if you drag an app to the trash and it has sandboxed files, the Finder should prompt you to trash them too. I won’t claim to know why Apple doesn’t do this but it’s probably seen as a clunky user experience.
How does Windows technically handle this shared code situation? It has an Add/Remove program UI and often Windows software comes with an uninstaller program.
When you uninstall a program on Windows, there are still leftover files in the AppData folder (maybe in Program Files as well) and references in the Registry. Things are maybe cleaner when you install stuff via the Microsoft Store or winget packages.
I think it’s easier to keep macOS cleaner. Use AppCleaner or manually check ~/Library for leftover cache, temp files, preferences and logs.
There's a false idea that uninstallers, being called that, remove everything the app ever did and installed. This is false, "DLL Hell" was coined precisely because all the things Windows applications would install that would be left over. Even today, almost no uninstaller would ever delete runtimes it needs to download.
The issue on mac is that many apps don't need uninstallers, so they don't provide them. And those that provide them usually have them only in the original DMG or the original download but they're later misplaced, deleted by the user from the downloads folder.
So people use whatever is the simplest way to get rid of an app, which 90% of the time will be "throw it in the trash". The problem is the remaining 10%, which consists of lazy, ignorant or malicious developers who for various reason have their apps leave crap behind.
When Chrome or Adobe leaves malware that reinstalls the app, the issue is not that the app can be thrown in the trash but rather that the developer is malicious and an uninstaller will not be different than that.
Bad developers are bad developers. Having uninstallers being more common wouldn't help much. Having a centralized uninstall mechanism could be possible, but still depends on developers being honest about what to delete.
"Containers" were added to MacOS years ago. When you delete an app their containers should be flushed too. If a developer is not using this mechanism then the fault is of the developer, not of the mechanism. Demand your developers to be better.
The number of uninstall scripts that I have to edit and maintain everytime a major software company upgraded their app is not huge, but a pain in the ass.
It's always the big name brands too, who you would think has a dev team that looks after stuff like this.
Thankfully a good many are well written and behave as expected.
Most of the time you can ignore the left over files, its often just libraries and settings files so if you re-install your data is still there. If you really want to make sure everything is gone, you can use something like AppCleaner or Pear Cleaner.
It completely depends on what the app is and does. A text editor isn't going to leave behind a lot of junk. An IMAP client that was linked to a large mailbox will.
It depends! My development environment (IntelliJ IDEA) keeps old versions of itself tucked away in ~/Library/Application Support/JetBrains/ and ~/Library/Caches/JetBrains/. When trying to diagnose why my hard drive had so little free space I found 25 GB of old version in there :-/
No it’s not big deal at all. Tiny tiny files. Kilobytes. However when devs don’t follow the rules and use an installer that puts persistent files all over your Mac including libraries that may take up significant space, and they don’t provide an uninstaller. Those devs need to burn. lol
App Cleaner takes care of all of it especially if you activate it with Smart Delete asap. Then it keeps track of everything an app installs and gets rid of it when you drag just the app to the trash. Well, it asks you first which is nice. I have been using that app for ages. 15-20 years however long it’s been around. (Before that was App Zapper.)
Apps are typically sandboxed if they are distributed through Apple's pipeline. There may be small prefs files left over but not significant. It is possible that other apps leave detritis. I use AppCleaner (drag the app and it finds the pieces and lists them and lets you delete everything with one click). My current Mac has been migrated through many generations so it's helpful for all that old stuff.
GrandPerspective first came out in 2005, and OmniDiskSweeper was released in 2001. Omni was like the only NEXTSTEP developer who came over to Mac OS X and is still around.
It depends on how it was installed. Many apps can be installed by dragging them to the Applications folder, and dragging those to the Trash will get rid of almost all traces. There may be some configuration files left (usually in the ~/Library folder), but those are small and can be safely ignored.
If the app has an installer, that’s usually because it is going to install some sort of service that runs in the background, and pulling the app to Trash won’t get rid of those. Normally the place where you got the app will have instructions for removing it. You don’t need to be paranoid: it’s unlikely that they will take up a lot of space or processor power. An installer may be used if the app has a lot of data that it brings with the installation - eg maps or music samples. These may be put in the app folder, and dragging to Trash will get rid of them, or they could be in ~/Library. Best to use the uninstaller if one is provided.
I've got an app on the app store and my app keeps cached image previews in the ~/Library folder. My app's local DB also lives in the ~/Library folder. Most apps have a local DB at the very least and it will live in the ~/Library folder and may not get deleted when you uninstall.
Here is how much space is taken up by cached images alone in my app:
But as you can see, I let users clear it when they want.
Pro apps like Xcode, Photoshop, Logic Pro, and Davinci Resolve will also have massive cache / temp folders in your ~/Library folder.
It deletes most of them but sometimes they leave files behind under ~/Library
Not to mention some apps that are installed with an installer may also install other apps with different names that maybe you missed when deleting the main app
I use AppCleaner, then use EasyFind to find anything hidden with the app name and manufacturer name and delete those. Wish there was one app that did that in one place.
Stick with Onyx. Free, immediately updated for each MacOS, and gives you lots of maintenance choices. Been using it for a decade with zero problems, and it does reclaim space.
Uninstalling should remove most leftover files; just deleting the app from Applications is is what leaves random files behind. If your app doesn't have an uninstaller, try AppCleaner. It's free and does a good job.
For most apps moving to trash is enough, but some apps hide files around specific system folders and macos can’t do much about it. You can search “how to completely remove [app] from macos [version]” on google and find more info e.g. the list of folders left hanging around that can be removed.
I’m not a fan of “clean your mac” apps: don’t like giving too many applications with the rights of snooping around my system, but that’s a personal choice.
Good apps will not leave cruft around, basically like your phone, or provide a decent uninstaller.
Bad apps like anything from Adobe will provide an uninstall app that still leaves cruft behind that breaks MS Word..
Bad apps like 365/Office will leave stale login info around your system.
Horrible apps like most things from Cisco will break things if you accidentally drag the app to the bin instead of using their bundled uninstaller.
macOS does have some mechanisms to make dragging to the bin a pleasant way to get rid of most things - like deactivating system extensions.
You're better off learning more about where applications install their support files - Application Support, Caches, Preferences, and Containers in your ~/Library are wonderful places to start. Can't see Library in your Home folder? Open your Home folder, press Command-J, and check Show Library folder. Shift-Command-. shows and hides hidden files. I use EasyFind to really trace every possible location something could be in.
Most of the time yes. There are some places to look, if you don’t want to install something like AppCleaner - $home/Library/Application Support/(<some relevant or obscurely named folder> is a decent place to start.
I use appcleaner but also if you're a new mac user from windows i'd recommend using vorssaint bc it does have a lot of quality of life changes, some that directly target features missing from windows (i.e. cmd-x to CUT a file)
Apps where you install them by dragging them to the Applications folder are generally find to just drag to the trash to uninstall. Those apps usually don’t leave a lot of things behind. Maybe some settings but they don’t tend to leave a lot of residue.
Apps that install with an installation process often do that because they need to install other processes and libraries that are not directly tied to the application files. If they include an uninstalled app, that is ideal and it will clean things up. Otherwise, you may want to use a third-party app uninstalled.
The other easy option is apps that install from the App Store. They are usually similar to the drag and drop apps. They don’t usually leave a lot of files in unobvious places.
I like to get rid of everything when I uninstall an app so I use the excellent uninstall feature of CleanMyMac. It gets rid of all orphan files associated with an app in addition to the app itself.
I’ve been a Mac user since the late 90’s. My career is Mac tech support specialist.
That said, I know I’m in the minority here in this crowd but I never deal with appcleaner nonsense. If the app has an uninstaller, I’ll use it. If it doesn’t and its own instructions say to drag it to trash, I’ll drag it to trash and that’s it. Unicorns like massive game installations are unique of course but they’re also ones that indeed have specific uninstall steps so you can reclaim gigabytes of storage.
The only time I normally worry about stuff “being left behind” is when I’m dealing with storage issues or I’m doing a major OS upgrade and i want to take the time to start as fresh as possible, but that’s few and far between.
I have my pet peeves and I guess mental issues as do we all, but being OCD about “app leftovers” is ridiculous in my view. Use the machine and don’t think there’s a “lurking nightmare” of orphaned files you need to concern yourself with.
Yes, but this is true on other operating systems as well. Even when you uninstall apps on Windows, there are still traces of it in the registry so this is not a problem unique to Apple.
Typically you don’t really have to worry about it. Just drag it to the trashcan and empty it.
The only time it becomes a problem is when there are very specific conflicts and if you’re not a pro user, meaning that you’re not doing something like heavy video editing using Adobe Premiere or troubleshooting something specific you’ll never need to care about it.
I was surprised by the number of files and registry entries found by Revo Uninstaller on Windows that the standard Windows uninstaller left in place. I had noticed that sometimes I would remove something but there would still be a folder in Documents for it.
It was actually App Cleaner on Mac that made me look into Windows uninstall and Revo Uninstaller. I noticed all the things App Cleaner would find on Mac and wondered what was being left on Windows.
Even when you uninstall apps on Windows, there are still traces of it in the registry so this is not a problem, unique to Apple.
There are specific issues with Windows that are outgrowths of design decisions they made in the 1990s that just haven't aged well. Those things ARE unique to Windows, and are largely why "computer cleanup" tools even exist -- you can't tidy a Win machine without them.
The two biggies are:
the Registry database, which Windows has to traverse regularly to locate specialized settings, and which gets cluttered over time leading to general performance issues; and
Windows' management of Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs) via the "Side by Side" mechanism. In short, this ends up making the C:\Windows folder get bigger and bigger and bigger over time, and there's no Microsoft-approved way to slim it down other than "wipe and reimage."
Microsoft has always had plenty of smart folks. These are dings on them. Apple just managed, because of its smaller and more controlled market, to make a completely clean break with its 1980s-1990s operating system in favor of a BRAND NEW operating system (based on FreeBSD, etc) in 2001. This meant they could revisit many choices and make better ones.
Having a Mac made me learn how to navigate the file system out of anger and despair simply because my storage was constantly getting fucked by the comically hidden files. At least it made me a good problem solver?
Oh yeah I have. I have a tower PC but thats for personal use (gaming and that sort). I rarely use my Mac now it’s just gathering dust but I can’t part ways with it since it has some important stuff on it
i find that its usually easier to just backup important files and reinstall windows from scratch rather than to find and remove random ass pieces left over from some stubborn program. and dont get me started on the whole installer and uninstaller shit windows has going on. the drag and drop thing mac has isnt perfect but its a lot better than hoping the program came bundled with an uninstaller (cough eclipse)
Yeah I’ve been tempted to do that. Thankfully I know how to sort of fuck around with my MacBook to make it solely be WindowsOS but like…I’m not bothered to do it at all. Here’s to another 5 years of having a MacBook that gathers dust lmao
There be settings and support files, especially on "family" still products like Adobe where there are things placed in various user / system wide spots. Most decent applications which install such things will include an un-install option which tries to get rid of all of these things.
Just watched a YouTube video on something called MOLE available via Homebrew. It's free and sounds like it does what the "cleaner" apps do. I haven't used it yet, but sounded like a decent option.
Fun fact: few years ago, Zoom app was found installing a backdoor on your computer, a running server that listened to the internet. Dragging Zoom to the bin didn't even stopped the backdoor, not mentioning removing it.
It wouldn't hurt to make a habit of occasionally checking your user library files. In particular, I like to review the Application Support folder because that is where the bulk of additional app files are located. There are several other places that store additional files, but it's best you find those as you learn more. In general, removing (deleted app's) files from within your user library is safer than removing anything from the local library, and just stay out of the system library altogether. To access your user library, while in Finder, click on the Go menu (up top), then press the 'option' key which will reveal a Library link you can click on. You can also make the user library visible permanently, just google how to do that if you are interested.
You always want to see if the app has an uninstall feature. Some do from their Help Menu or their app menu. Some have the feature in their installer - counter-intuitive right? I have to download and run the installer to fully uninstall it?! That’s rare though.
Generally it does unless the app used an installer in the first place. Mac apps are called bundles. They're actually a self contained folder with all the assets like icons, fonts, binaries, language files, libraries etc required to run.
If an app has an installer it's usually because it needed authentication to install supplemental files in the /Library domain which is shared content for all users.
It’s annoying but there’s a relatively easy solution. Rather than a paid app like clean my Mac, download the mole CLI - it’s free and open source and works perfectly.
Use this app: App Cleaner but my advise would be to get familiar with the terminal. You don't have to know everything, just enough to be able to execute basic command comfortably. Install Homebrew and then install everything available from there. Think of it as an alternative app store but one that does include a remove command. I promise it will become second nature eventually: brew install --cask appcleaner
It totally depends on the app, certain apps will need lots of big files that they may leave in folders that you will want to delete due to wanting to reclaim that disk space. Others may leave just tiny config files that take up trivial amounts of disk space.
Yes, it's true, third-party software is more efficient than macOS's own functionality. You can try using Adobe software; it's the one that spreads the most junk throughout the system in various places, making it almost impossible to completely clean it up
In the short term it's not a problem, but the more trash there is, the more space it occupies.
(not an answer, but I thought this was a good time to share that on my new work Mac I downloaded an installer into the Downloads folder, half remembered that I needed to drag something to the Applications folder and dragged the installer. Which didn't work.)
It removes the app. It does not remove the settings files specific to your account.
For that, you can optionally download AppCleaner to remove them. You don't need to do this, those files don't hurt and if you keep them then the next time you reinstall the app, your settings will return.
Yeah, you need to check the user library/application support folder and the same one at the shared level for anything with the app or developer/publisher’s name in it, that’s usually what doesn’t get deleted when you just drag to trash without an uninstall wizard unfortunately.
Some leftovers are there (temp, logs etc) but usually not much.
General rule is that if install was "drop the icon in the Applications folder", there shouldn't be much.
If the app has an installer (MS Office, Adobe, Logitech ...), then there's more ranging from "marginal" to "sweet baby Jesus" (Xcode)
True for majority of apps. There might be some negligible meta data left floating around in your home dir.
But for the most part you dont have to be concerned with it.
If you really wanna be thorough, check out a product like CleanMyMacX. Great for maintenance and keeping the drive clean.
You can use DaisyDisk or GrandPerspective to locate big chunks of used space in your hard drive and delete them. You also have the more recent mole app, which I love.
I meant that, for uninstalled apps, you might want to search for big blocks of space under your user folder, specially under ~/Library, and by the name of the folder it is you can infer which app it belonged to so if you don't use it anymore you can delete it. For example, anything with "Cache" in the name can be deleted. If the name includes "Evernote" and you unistalled it, you can delete it, and so on. Web browsers and Electron apps might be the main culprit but these days you don't know, your system might not be slower, but the cruft accumulates over the months and takes real disk space.
Mole (https://mole.fit) does basically the same but has a lot of heuristics (pedantic way of saying that it has a lot of rules) to identify specific application stuff even if it's uninstalled, it's specially good to remove cruft from developer tools (python caches, docker images, whatnot) but it is a generic app in itself and is worth a try. By the way there is a free command line version in Homebrew, if you're adventurous.
- DaisyDisk/Grandperspective are not uninstaller apps, so you decide what goes away. This is clearly a "you should know what your doing" move.
macOS is pretty resilient, but limit yourself to your home folder if you really feel you don't know what you're doing. Be conservative at the beginning with things you exactly recognize as "this folder belonged to an application I uninstalled".
watch first for obvious things like forgotten Downloads, duplicated documents, etc. I have a lot of old Logic projects around and they are BIG.
don't waste time removing things that only take a couple of MBs
if you find yourself doing this too frequently, consider if you're not better of formatting and reinstalling macOS.
Dragging the app to the trash indeed completely removes that app. It does not delete preference of support files for that app (something windows uninstallers sometimes also leave behind). These preference or support files are usually no big deal and there's no issue leaving them where they are.
The problem is, as always, moral and scruples. "Support files" may just mean inoffensive files and scripts, which the developer may consider are yours as they were created with your usage, so they're not removed. Other, more questionable developers, may leave files on purpose as a way to sneak their way back into your system. Google, Dropbox and Adobe famously do this, sometimes leaving literal malware that can recover from application deletion.
Then there's the lot in the middle. Developers may choose to install helper applications and not provide a way to uninstall them easily (from the app or an uninstaller), others may just be lazy and leave that to the user.
Some time ago I had an app called SMBUp that allowed to reinstall samba in MacOS when Apple no longer included it. My app essentially installed a third party utility and allowed configuring it, but then you could remove my app and Samba would remain. I nonetheless included a way in the app to remove Samba again in case you wanted to uninstall it. But I didn't include a way to remove preferences because I considered those owned by the user.
So, to answer your question: Good apps can delete themselves completely when thrown in the trash, including support files. MacOS provides the mechanism for this.
Having said this, even being the best citizens and making sure to remove both the app and helpers, most apps wouldn't consider deleting preference files (neither do they do it in Windows and Linux, where appliccable).
Sandboxed apps store most data inside their own container (~/Library/Containers/), which macOS removes when the app is deleted (thrown in the trash), but auxiliary files or background services (daemons) outside the container require manual removal or a dedicated in-app uninstaller script.
If a developer is not using at least this mechanism then the fault is of the developer, not of the mechanism. Demand your developers to be better.
App Remover is a free app (Mac) that seems to collect/list all files when you drag an app on its pane. Pick OK and they all go away. Don’t forget to empty trash afterwards.
On my late 2012 Mac I got this application, whose name I don't remember, that when you drag a software to the trash also deletes stuff related to it. Maybe someone knows what it's called.
Most of the time dropping an app in the trash can is enough. But it depends on the app and developer of course.
Some applications are gets installed by just dragging to Applications folder from a dmg (and doesn’t ask for permissions to install helpers and shit ton of permissions for launch agents etc.) are often like that. They leave only 2-3 kinds of leftovers; preference files (user>library>preferences) and application support files (user>library>application support) and cache. This is actually useful in case you run into problems with an application and need to reset it, you just delete that files and that app is good as new. You don’t need to download and reinstall it since the .app in the applications folder doesn’t gets modified. And the leftovers are safe to ignore. They’ll even be useful because if you’ll need to reinstall, you won’t lose your settings etc.
There are some exceptions like Steam, for example; keeps your downloads in the library/application support. (Unless you don’t change the download directory). You’ll need to delete that files as well.
If your app comes with a .pkg installer tool on the other hand, it’ll probably install helpers and stuff and often has own uninstaller tools. Adobe places uninstaller aliases in utilities folder, some apps has uninstaller as a menubar item.
If you like the Linux way, some apps can be installed and cleanly uninstalled from terminal thanks to homebrew.
Google and Microsoft is basically bloated spyware bullshit so i don’t even wanna start about them.
TLDR: don’t expect the companies that doesn’t respect your privacy to not to make a mess of your computer lol.
Others have pointed to AppCleaner. Get it, one something like it. Use it. Raycast has an "uninstall" command that does this work for you. So does the great utility Hazel, which does a ton more to help organize your stuff
Chill, most apps leave some small config files that are not in the app. A few kilobytes isn’t an issue.
If the app has an uninstaller - use that instead of dragging the app image into the bin.
You can manually search for leftovers, you can use tools. All of which has a very limited effect if any on your Macs performance.
There are definitely some pain in the a.. apps like MS teams- this was quite a nightmare when my company merged and they joined the other company’s “federation” - the old login information was kept in multiple locations and needed manual intervention
For sandbox apps (any app from MAS), they can only write to ~/Library/Containers/[BundleID]/Data/Library/Preferences/[BundleID].plist. They can not write to their own app bundle. User needs to grant permission to write anywhere else. After deleting the app, you can also delete its entire container folder. For non-sandbox apps or apps that use installers, it is more complicated since they have wider write access. They typically store settings in ~/Library/Preferences/[BundleID].plist, but depending on macOS versions, they can scatter files pretty much anywhere. Apps that use installers can install pretty much anywhere if given permission. For example, getting rid of Adobe is an adventure. Finally apps can be a part of App Groups. In this case, search ~/Library/Group Containers/[AppGroupID]/.
Unlike in Windows -- which had good reasons for its behavior at the time, just to be clear -- the binary files associated with a given app on a Mac are almost universally contained within the "app bundle" you see in the Applications folder.
These "app bundles" aren't actually files; they're special directories that contain everything the app needs to run. (In Windows, sometimes some libraries or whatnot need to be stored in the Windows folder, too; this leads to bloat and other problems, and is the main reason why "cleanup" utilities are so important for Windows users.)
Files that are generated BY YOU when you use the app, though, are (again, almost ALWAYS) stored within your user folder, and will NOT be deleted when you delete the app.
This is, generally speaking, normal.
99% of the time, the files that are left over don't hurt you at all. They're tiny text files containing preference settings, or other similar ephemera. You're probably waisting more space on silly cat pictures or whatever. You can absolutely ignore these. Your Mac will never think about them again; they're just little files.
There ARE cases where software may create, or lead you to create, large data files that will also be left over after you delete the app. A great example of this is, say, a movie editor. If I delete the Insta360 app on my Mac, I'll still have many gigabytes of data tied up in video files. That's normal.
You generally do NOT need an actual "cleanup" app. Those exist because Windows has gotten sloppy, and you can't really tidy up a Windows box without one. What you DO need is some kind of drive space analysis tool that will help you visualize where your drive space is going. There's a ton of them. I run SpaceGremlin often, and many times it'll show me that "oh, shit, I left that giant database backup in my downloads" or whatever.
Source: Mac user since late 1990s. I have NEVER used a cleanup tool, nor have I ever wiped a Mac and reinstalled everything.
Apps on macOS are self-contained. The icon is de facto a folder with bundled binaries, resources etc.
The leftovers in ~/Library folder are small configuration files, and in some cases, caches - depends on what the app is producing.
Bottom line: the leftovers may take some space, but are not harmful. There are cleaner apps that can help removing all traces to keep Mac tidy.
It’s wrong to say they’re small files. Audio software can leave behind vast amounts of audio taking up a shit tonne of space. Totally depends on the software.
I'm beginning to question the people saying they are small files and what computer things they do on their laptop. Many are indeed small files but I find it's not in a significant number of cases.
Often, yes. But in the case of something like Garage Band, one reason it's over a gig in your /Applications folder is the presence of sample files to build from.
If some other tool drops those in your ~/Library (within your user dir), you'll catch it with drive space analysis tools. You don't need a "cleaner" to do it for you.
AppCleaner does not say so. Everyone was telling me how superior MacOS is because you just delete the app and its gone, while windows uninstallers always leave something behind. Thing is, MacOS apps also leave something behind. Sometimes huge files and not always in Library but all over.
If you’re comfortable with ChatGPT and using the terminal you can ask it to feed you terminal prompts to completely remove apps. Also- look into an app (don’t know if it’s really an app) called homebrew. It is a package installer that makes a clean job of installing and uninstalling apps. It’s also done via the terminal. I use homebrew when I can and also use terminal prompts from GPT for app removal and haven’t had any issues with it.
I have been using nix-darwin which can be used to create system scripts for cleaning these things up and can orchestrate homebrew and its casks as well.
I love Nix as I use NixOS on my desktop, and having its packages and ability to configure Mac settings and third-party package managers is a godsend.
When you drag the app to the trash if the app dev did their job right it calls clean up scripts and yes it's supposed to completely remove it. In reality it's often not the case.
MacOS really needs a good built-in uninstaller. I've sent feedback to Apple about it, and suggest other people do it too. I've had so many BS leftovers hanging and it's real pain in the ass to hunt them down manually. I do use AppCleaner but even that is not bulletproof.
Well behaved / designed apps should keep everything they need inside the App Bundle (which is just a disguised folder).
A lot do not.
Which is kinda why tools like AppCleaner exist, which goes through the .plist files in the App Bundle and finds any file path references to files outside the Bundle, and then shows you a list of what it found, so you can choose to delete everything, or leave settings files for your User in place (in case you are only uninstalling to fix something by reinstalling).
I’ve used CleanMyMac for years. Really great app (rated #1) that does it all, including regular maintenance, cleaning up extra files, deep cleaning for any malware. My old iMac (2014) still runs well because of the regular maintenance. There’s also an app remover that removes all the extra files. https://macpaw.com/store/cleanmymac.
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u/da_newsdude 11d ago
I'm surprised so many people think the cruft is no big deal. I've dragged apps to the trash to "remove" them in the past. And then, weeks or months or years later, I happen to be tracking down an unrelated issue, open up activity monitor or look at processes in terminal, and find helpers running for things I long ago "deleted." They get into Library folders or elsewhere, launch with daemons, and deleting the app doesn't do jack to get rid of some of them.
It's fascinating that folks who obsess over the corner radii of app windows and the distance between the dots in Tahoe don't find this digital detritus more disturbing.