How to completely uninstall apps on Mac OS

Uninstalling an application on Mac OS is as simple as uninstalling an app on your smartphone. But due to various types of applications, programs & different delete options available on Mac, sometimes it’s confusing for the users & also there are cases where an app won’t delete. This guide covers multiple ways to uninstall apps on Mac OS without any issues and also helps you delete Mac apps that “won’t delete”.

I’m using a M1 MacBook Air while writing this article, but the process is the same for all the Apple Macs – MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac mini & all other Mac OS machines.

What happens when you delete an app on Mac

Deleting or uninstalling an app on mac means, you are removing the application as well as the data of that application from your Mac. For instance, if you are deleting a web browser like Google Chrome or Firefox, uninstalling will delete the application from your Mac along with its data like history, saved passwords, bookmarks, extensions, autofill data etc. you get the point.

Multiple ways to Uninstall an Application on Mac

There are a couple of ways you can uninstall an application on Mac.

1. Uninstall apps from Launchpad
2. Delete application using Finder
3. Uninstall apps from Terminal
4. Using 3rd Party apps – NOT COVERED in this article.

I’m not covering any methods on how to delete using 3rd party apps – method 4, as I feel it’s not required. The options Mac OS provide is more than enough for the complete removal of the applications & their respective data files.

Note : If you delete any application that you have a subscription via Apple – Like streaming apps, then you might get a pop up asking for confirmation on whether to continue to subscription or cancel.

Uninstall apps on Mac from App launchpad

• From your dock, open launchpad.
• If you don’t have the launchpad icon on your Dock, use the spotlight search. Press CMD+SPACE and search for launchpad in the search bar and open the app.
• Press and hold “OPTION” key you will see icons jiggle. More like shaking in fear as they don’t know which one you are going to delete.
• Click on the “X” button (delete) next to the app. This will prompt for “Touch ID” or “Password”. Provide the confirmation & it will delete the application.

Note – You may notice that some apps don’t show the “X” button next to the icon when you are holding the “OPTION” key. That’s because the “X” – delete option from launchpad is only available for applications installed from App Store.

Delete an application on Mac from Finder

Unlike the “Delete from launchpad” option, using Finder we can delete all types of applications that are either installed using the setup file or installed from App store.

• Open Finder on your Mac or go to Desktop home screen and press “CMD+N” to open a Finder Window.
• Go to Applications from the side bar & select the application you want to delete / uninstall.
• Do any of the below to uninstall the app after selecting it
  ○ Press CMD+DELETE to delete the app to Bin.
  ○ Drag the application icon to bin
  ○ Choose from the Menu bar > File > Move to Bin
  ○ Right click for context menu & click on “Move to Bin” option.
• This will prompt for “Touch ID” or “Password”. Provide the confirmation & it will move the application to Bin.

Knowledge byte: 
Do you know the right terminology for "Right click menu" on Windows & Mac OS is actually "Context Menu" / "Contextual Menu"

Uninstall an application on Mac from Terminal

Unlike the other two methods, this one is mostly based on command line interface & little different.

• Open Terminal app on your Mac. Or Press CMD+SPACE to open spotlight search & type “Terminal” & open the application.
• Enter the below command

sudo uinstall file://Applications/<app_name>

• In the place of <App_name> you can try giving the first alphabet of the app you are trying to delete and press tab to see all the possible names. (refer to the above image)
• Enter the complete name correctly from the results & press “Return”.
• This will prompt for password. Enter your Mac password & the uninstall will proceed.

How to Delete / Uninstall Apps on Mac that won’t delete

There is this possibility that you might see application refusing to delete or move to bin. If you are facing such issue that means the app is active in the background. Solution for this is to kill the app (Force quit) and try uninstalling.

• First Close the application.
• Now from the Menu bar click on Apple Logo > Force Quit
• This will open the “Force Quit” application. Select the app from the list & force quit.
• Now try again and this time you can uninstall successfully.

Undo Uninstall

If you have accidentally deleted an application using any of the above-mentioned process, you can always undo the process by going to BIN & right click on the menu & click on “put back”. But this only works if the app is still available in the trash.

 I hope you’ll find this article helpful. Please drop a comment and let me know if you have questions or any suggestions to improve this article.

Source : Apple