Uninstalling programs on OS X
How do I uninstall a program in OS X? I’ve been getting this questions a lot lately with the recent surge in Mac interest around my Company and friends. So listen closely………
In almost every instance, you only have to do one thing, you drag it to the trash, or Ctrl-Click (right click)and choose “Move to Trash”.
How simple is that? No uninstall, no Program Manger to deal with, it’s as simple as Apple Pie. (I never really understood that saying, why is apple pie simple?)
If your not sure where the program is on your hard drive, that’s east to fix too, you simply Ctrl-Click (right
click) on the alias for an application (on the icon in the dock, for example) and click “Show in Finder.” A window will open showing the original application on your hard drive, most likely in the Applications directory right off the root.
It wasn’t always this simple, you see there are two basic kinds of programs for OS X.
The old kind, consisting of a program file (or “application,” as Apple calls it) and usually a few other files. When you want to get rid of a program of this kind, need to locate and move all the files to the trash.
The other kind is a newer, and much better way, called a package, an idea that came with with OS X. Apple liked the idea of packaging software so much that it even called it a “package.” On the surface, a package looks like a single file, you only see one icon.
A good example of a package is iCal. Put your mouse over the icon for iCal in your Doc and Ctrl-Click (right click) on it, choose “Show in Finder” That’s the iCal package. If you Ctrl-Click (right click) and choose “Show package contents” you will see there are actually more than 350 separate files inside the package, now I think this is a massive improvement over the way some other Operating systems handles software.
Now, before you drag a program to the trash, you have to make sure you’re getting rid of the whole program. If it’s a package, you’re good to go, move it right into the trash. But if the program you want to get rid of is the old, unpackaged kind, you need to move it and any associated files into the trash.
Good luck, and I’m glad to try and help if you have any questions.
