Uninstalling Programs

R

Rewind

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The way of deleting software in OSX seems ridiculous, you just remove the app and it leaves a whole whack of dependent files on your hard drive.

Question 1:

1) What (preferably free) software can I use to get rid of applications.
2) Is there a way to remove all the other info installed from past applications?

Help!
 
Whats the point? Those dependent files are usually preference files which really dont seem to take up much space at all. The average seems to be about 4kb.

Still - if its important you could try appzapper - it gives you a few free removals.

Otherwise use spotlight and search manually and delete for yourself. :)

EDIT - try one of these http://osx.iusethis.com/search?q=uninstall
 
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Clearly I'm still in a Windows Mentality where there is more than one file...

If this is so, whats the point of having these pieces of software? I'm so lost.
 
These little files bother some people I guess. Once you've deleted the main file - which is generally a package containing a load of files - you've deleted the app.

BTW - You can see this if you right click on most apps and select Show Package Contents.
 
Coming from a windows environment I never understood the concept of 'package contents' till much later and started using AppDelete. Cleans all associated files of the App being deleted as well. (..and its free)
 
Okay so someone answer this one for me: I downloaded a 1.1 gig Adobe After Effects trial and the uninstall only comes to something over 300 megs. What on earth is going on?
 
adsl3g said:
Coming from a windows environment I never understood the concept of 'package contents' till much later and started using AppDelete. Cleans all associated files of the App being deleted as well. (..and its free)
Click to expand...
So, what do I use to delete AppDelete?
 
I've had good results with CleanApp which is also bundled with some other useful features. (it's language deletion script beachballed on me though... had to use Monolingual for that)

With any automated deletion app, just make sure you always double check yourself which files it's selecting for deletion. None I've seen yet are truly infallible. (either leaving a few orphan files behind, or tagging the occasional mistaken file for deletion)

That said, the advantage of CleanApp is that once it's installed it keeps a log of all NEW installs, so the deletion of those programs will be more accurate than any post-installation cleanup app.
 
adsl3g said:
LOL - Erase and reformat... :rolleyes:

Seriously, Appdelete is a single package file - just trash it!
Click to expand...
lol - I have :)

If it gets to the stage that a couple hundred mb are really going to make that much of a difference then I'll be looking for a bigger hdd anyway ;)
 
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