4 ms·

I never had macOS remove those files automatically when dragging the app to the trash. I still have files left from 4 MacBooks ago (for apps I haven’t installed

by alin23 4y ago

I never had macOS remove those files automatically when dragging the app to the trash. I still have files left from 4 MacBooks ago (for apps I haven’t installed in a long time) because I’m always migrating the home folder. I guess they’re just expected to be left behind in case you change your mind and want to reinstall the app later. That way you’ll still continue where you left with the same settings. They’re inert files and very small usually, comparative to our current SSD offerings.

kitsunesoba 4y ago
> I guess they’re just expected to be left behind in case you change your mind and want to reinstall the app later. That way you’ll still continue where you left with the same settings. And if apps are well behaved, only writing tiny config files in ~/Library/Preferences/ and the like, it’s not really a problem. The amount of space taken up in that situation was tiny even when OS X 10.0 was brand new and 10GB was a common HDD size. On the other hand if the app pulls an Adobe and leaves tons of relatively heavy crap strewn about, yeah it should probably come with an uninstaller.
- kergonath 4y ago
  > On the other hand if the app pulls an Adobe and leaves tons of relatively heavy crap strewn about, yeah it should probably come with an uninstaller. Google is guilty of this sort of things as well. Well, it was anyway at some point. I somehow managed to get rid of everything, including their updater that re-installs itself regardless of what you do to remove it. I wish we had more control over sandboxes so we could put some software in solitary confinement with no possibility to write anything anywhere without asking. The new notifications when some software installs a background service is a step in the right direction.
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    > I wish we had more control over sandboxes so we could put some software in solitary confinement with no possibility to write anything anywhere without asking. I’d like this a lot as well, but expect it to come with the usual griping from devs about desktop OSes improving their security models and/or giving the user more control over what third party software can do. Anything short of full access to everything seems to be seen as tyranny.
    - joshspankit 4y ago
      There’s one legitimate dev gripe that Apple has yet to solve properly: Storage of (paid) license data. Apple deals with it for first party apps by tying licenses to the App Store, but for any company who chooses to distribute themselves a true sandbox means they cannot store license data or even worse: they have to store it “out in the open” (which is to say: in a location that’s obvious and where piraters can start to reverse-engineer it). Now, to be clear: I’m very much on the camp of “security through obscurity is not security at all”, but what I am saying is that there’s a significant and legitimate unsolved problem for devs to gripe about when it comes to sandboxes and restrictions.
      - kitsunesoba 4y ago
        While I kind of agree I’m increasingly of the opinion that piracy isn’t a battle worth fighting, with pirates mostly consisting of those who wouldn’t have been customers anyway. I have yet to publish any commercial software, but if I were I think I’d go the route of Sublime Text and the git client Fork which as far as I know stop at simple local license verification. If my business were so sensitive to piracy that its existence were threatened by it I’d probably make my main product an online-only subscription instead.
        joshspankit 4y ago
        I’m increasingly of the same opinion as well, but that choice is up to the companies and developers who make the software and if they decide to implement license verification there’s no way to do that reliably within a sandbox (unless of course it’s online-only, but then you get a whole different issue affecting offline users)
      - kergonath 4y ago
        Definitely agree. Getting all the licenses in order is a huge pain when setting up a machine. I use notes in the iCloud Keychain but that’s a bit of a kludge. Some first party support would be great. The infrastructure is already there for this stuff to be encrypted and protected properly.
  - kccqzy 4y ago
    macOS already has a sandbox. In practice many sandboxed apps can't actually write to /Library or ~/Library. They write to a sandboxed directory that pretends to be ~/Library further containing directories like ~/Library/Application Support. The real path of that directory is generally under ~/Library/Containers. Now for obvious reasons Apple cannot force all macOS apps to be sandboxed. It was already a PR hit when they required Mac App Store apps to be sandboxed.
    - fragmede 4y ago
      You're also allowed to run macOS VMs on aapple hardware, so once practice is to install sketchy software into a VM where escape is much harder.
    - kergonath 4y ago
      > macOS already has a sandbox. In practice many sandboxed apps can't actually write to /Library or ~/Library. They write to a sandboxed directory that pretends to be ~/Library further containing directories like ~/Library/Application Support. The real path of that directory is generally under ~/Library/Containers. I know that: what I would like is more ways for the users to control this. I expect these companies to do everything they can to evade restrictions, and I’d like some ways to tighten the rules more than the defaults for some applications. I think from the OS perspective everything is there already, just not accessible through any UI. > Now for obvious reasons Apple cannot force all macOS apps to be sandboxed. It was already a PR hit when they required Mac App Store apps to be sandboxed. Indeed. But overall it’s an improvement for user security, just like SIP and the read-only system image.
  - JadeNB 4y ago
    > The new notifications when some software installs a background service is a step in the right direction. I like that, too! Except that, at least for me, the bug is still present that I get notified of a background service that was added days, weeks, or years ago … over and over and over and over and over, even if I have turned it off.
- wkat4242 4y ago
  Yeah all the crap Adobe and Microsoft apps leave in /Library/Application Support/ for example. That's really a trash heap on a Mac.
- justinclift 4y ago
  Autodesk Fusion 360 does this too. It's "installer" downloads the multi-GB package for it + installs the whole thing into a local user folder which the OS has no knowledge of. Apparently they do this so they can control when it's updated, without having to go through any OS controls. Needless to say, when people "delete" it they often are just deleting a stub rather than the actual multi-GB file set. :(
- aflag 4y ago
  Having all those files around from an app I've used long ago feels really untindy to me. Even though, practically, it's ok. It still bothers. Feels like if you dispose of some old stuff by throwing them on the roof. Even though it works, it feels messy.
- mike_hearn 4y ago
  The main problem is caches. macOS can actually clear caches when you run low on disk space or uninstall the app, but, only for sandboxed apps.
gnuj3 4y ago
Is there any tool that can find those leftovers and remove then permanently?
- CharlesW 4y ago
  The free AppCleaner was mentioned by another reader earlier in the thread, and I've been happy with CleanMyMac X.
  - gnuj3 4y ago
    AppCleaner is no good after you deleted an app by other means and it left crap on the hd tho… as far as I recall CleanMyMac was a paid closed course app?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - jb1991 4y ago
      You can still delete all the junk an app leaves behind using this to find it all, then trash them: https://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/ https://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/
      - gnuj3 4y ago
        Thank you
    - CharlesW 4y ago
      > …as far as I recall CleanMyMac was a paid closed course app? Yes.
LoganDark 4y ago
> I never had macOS remove those files automatically when dragging the app to the trash. Because it only happens when you use the specific "x" button in Launchpad

by alin23 4y ago

kitsunesoba 4y ago

> I guess they’re just expected to be left behind in case you change your mind and want to reinstall the app later. That way you’ll still continue where you left with the same settings. And if apps are well behaved, only writing tiny config files in ~/Library/Preferences/ and the like, it’s not really a problem. The amount of space taken up in that situation was tiny even when OS X 10.0 was brand new and 10GB was a common HDD size. On the other hand if the app pulls an Adobe and leaves tons of relatively heavy crap strewn about, yeah it should probably come with an uninstaller.

kergonath 4y ago
> On the other hand if the app pulls an Adobe and leaves tons of relatively heavy crap strewn about, yeah it should probably come with an uninstaller. Google is guilty of this sort of things as well. Well, it was anyway at some point. I somehow managed to get rid of everything, including their updater that re-installs itself regardless of what you do to remove it. I wish we had more control over sandboxes so we could put some software in solitary confinement with no possibility to write anything anywhere without asking. The new notifications when some software installs a background service is a step in the right direction.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  > I wish we had more control over sandboxes so we could put some software in solitary confinement with no possibility to write anything anywhere without asking. I’d like this a lot as well, but expect it to come with the usual griping from devs about desktop OSes improving their security models and/or giving the user more control over what third party software can do. Anything short of full access to everything seems to be seen as tyranny.
  - joshspankit 4y ago
    There’s one legitimate dev gripe that Apple has yet to solve properly: Storage of (paid) license data. Apple deals with it for first party apps by tying licenses to the App Store, but for any company who chooses to distribute themselves a true sandbox means they cannot store license data or even worse: they have to store it “out in the open” (which is to say: in a location that’s obvious and where piraters can start to reverse-engineer it). Now, to be clear: I’m very much on the camp of “security through obscurity is not security at all”, but what I am saying is that there’s a significant and legitimate unsolved problem for devs to gripe about when it comes to sandboxes and restrictions.
    - kitsunesoba 4y ago
      While I kind of agree I’m increasingly of the opinion that piracy isn’t a battle worth fighting, with pirates mostly consisting of those who wouldn’t have been customers anyway. I have yet to publish any commercial software, but if I were I think I’d go the route of Sublime Text and the git client Fork which as far as I know stop at simple local license verification. If my business were so sensitive to piracy that its existence were threatened by it I’d probably make my main product an online-only subscription instead.
      - joshspankit 4y ago
        I’m increasingly of the same opinion as well, but that choice is up to the companies and developers who make the software and if they decide to implement license verification there’s no way to do that reliably within a sandbox (unless of course it’s online-only, but then you get a whole different issue affecting offline users)
    - kergonath 4y ago
      Definitely agree. Getting all the licenses in order is a huge pain when setting up a machine. I use notes in the iCloud Keychain but that’s a bit of a kludge. Some first party support would be great. The infrastructure is already there for this stuff to be encrypted and protected properly.
- kccqzy 4y ago
  macOS already has a sandbox. In practice many sandboxed apps can't actually write to /Library or ~/Library. They write to a sandboxed directory that pretends to be ~/Library further containing directories like ~/Library/Application Support. The real path of that directory is generally under ~/Library/Containers. Now for obvious reasons Apple cannot force all macOS apps to be sandboxed. It was already a PR hit when they required Mac App Store apps to be sandboxed.
  - fragmede 4y ago
    You're also allowed to run macOS VMs on aapple hardware, so once practice is to install sketchy software into a VM where escape is much harder.
  - kergonath 4y ago
    > macOS already has a sandbox. In practice many sandboxed apps can't actually write to /Library or ~/Library. They write to a sandboxed directory that pretends to be ~/Library further containing directories like ~/Library/Application Support. The real path of that directory is generally under ~/Library/Containers. I know that: what I would like is more ways for the users to control this. I expect these companies to do everything they can to evade restrictions, and I’d like some ways to tighten the rules more than the defaults for some applications. I think from the OS perspective everything is there already, just not accessible through any UI. > Now for obvious reasons Apple cannot force all macOS apps to be sandboxed. It was already a PR hit when they required Mac App Store apps to be sandboxed. Indeed. But overall it’s an improvement for user security, just like SIP and the read-only system image.
- JadeNB 4y ago
  > The new notifications when some software installs a background service is a step in the right direction. I like that, too! Except that, at least for me, the bug is still present that I get notified of a background service that was added days, weeks, or years ago … over and over and over and over and over, even if I have turned it off.
wkat4242 4y ago
Yeah all the crap Adobe and Microsoft apps leave in /Library/Application Support/ for example. That's really a trash heap on a Mac.
justinclift 4y ago
Autodesk Fusion 360 does this too. It's "installer" downloads the multi-GB package for it + installs the whole thing into a local user folder which the OS has no knowledge of. Apparently they do this so they can control when it's updated, without having to go through any OS controls. Needless to say, when people "delete" it they often are just deleting a stub rather than the actual multi-GB file set. :(
aflag 4y ago
Having all those files around from an app I've used long ago feels really untindy to me. Even though, practically, it's ok. It still bothers. Feels like if you dispose of some old stuff by throwing them on the roof. Even though it works, it feels messy.
mike_hearn 4y ago
The main problem is caches. macOS can actually clear caches when you run low on disk space or uninstall the app, but, only for sandboxed apps.

gnuj3 4y ago

Is there any tool that can find those leftovers and remove then permanently?

CharlesW 4y ago
The free AppCleaner was mentioned by another reader earlier in the thread, and I've been happy with CleanMyMac X.
- gnuj3 4y ago
  AppCleaner is no good after you deleted an app by other means and it left crap on the hd tho… as far as I recall CleanMyMac was a paid closed course app?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - jb1991 4y ago
    You can still delete all the junk an app leaves behind using this to find it all, then trash them: https://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/ https://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/
    - gnuj3 4y ago
      Thank you
  - CharlesW 4y ago
    > …as far as I recall CleanMyMac was a paid closed course app? Yes.

LoganDark 4y ago

> I never had macOS remove those files automatically when dragging the app to the trash. Because it only happens when you use the specific "x" button in Launchpad