10 ms·

This is just unbelievable. The billion $$ company cant just automate the uninstall procedure for their users? How hard would it be to auto delete the contents o

by tacker2000 4y ago

This is just unbelievable. The billion $$ company cant just automate the uninstall procedure for their users? How hard would it be to auto delete the contents of ~/Library? Or have some periodic auto clean? one can always dream, no? I wonder how many users that have uninstalled VMware still have 30 gigs of unused VMs lying around on their disk.

jrmg 4y ago
You can also just run apps from anywhere - network drives, removable disks, disk images etc., so the system can’t just delete settings for apps it’s currently unaware of.
- skyyler 4y ago
  Revo Uninstaller for windows manages to do this.
- mattigames 4y ago
  That's also Apple's fault isn't it? App data should fall into an predictable folder regardless of the location from where is ran, if for whatever reason the app needs to use a different folder it should be something developers have to go to multiple hurdles to implement (e.g. specify in a manifest what files and where will them be stored, and explicitly specify it they should be automatically deleted or not after moving the app to the trash)
  - ryandrake 4y ago
    To be fair, the situation isn't much better on Windows or Linux. While at least they have a concept of uninstalling an application, you're still reliant on the developer actually getting it right and not missing some tempfile or something.
    - skissane 4y ago
      The filesystem doesn’t have rich enough metadata about temporary files. At least Windows has a file attribute for temporary files (FILE_ATTRIBUTE_TEMPORARY), although I’m uncertain how many apps actually set it on their temporary files; Linux/Unix/etc appears to have no real equivalent. I think ideally temporary files would have rich metadata - the ID of the process, session, and application/package which created them, and some kind of retention policy and expiry date. Of course, one could always use xattrs for that, but unless they are standardised few would use them. C library functions such as mkstemp/mkdtemp/etc could be enhanced to set metadata on temporary files. The OS package manager (apt/rpm/etc) could put an xattr on an executable with the UUID of the package, and then mkstemp could copy that to an xattr of all temporary files. Now if the FS also indexed xattrs, we could upon uninstall find all temp files owned by a given package and remove them. Many mainframe/minicomputer file systems support file expiry dates, which is an interesting feature which Unix missed.
  - badsectoracula 4y ago
    Yeah and application bundle proplists could help with that too.
  - jdminhbg 4y ago
    > That's also Apple's fault isn't it? Sure, but if they locked things down the way you’re proposing, people would absolutely lose their minds about the iOSification of macOS.
    - AbusiveHNAdmin 4y ago
      supporting uninstallation ≠ locking down
      - jdminhbg 4y ago
        Supporting uninstallation by restricting applications to a sandbox that can be cleaned up == locking down
        AbusiveHNAdmin 4y ago
        Yep.
  - goranmoomin 4y ago
    > App data should fall into an predictable folder regardless of the location from where is ran In fact, App Store apps are guaranteed to do that (by being in a closed sandbox); that's why Apple has an uninstallation procedure only for App Store apps. > specify in a manifest what files and where will them be stored, and explicitly specify it they should be automatically deleted or not after moving the app to the trash macOS tries to do that, and developers cry that macOS is becoming more and more closed. In fact, macOS already disallows all apps (including non-sandboxed apps) touching ~/Documents and ~/Downloads except for specific exceptions that the user grants.
    - wkat4242 4y ago
      Yeah the way they're doing this is a bit of a pain in the ass to be honest. Set up a new Mac and you have to do though tons of these popups. It causes popup fatigue and users start just clicking yes without even reading it. I've seen it many times. It defeats the purpose this way. It reminds me very much of how they made fun of Windows Vista in the past: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyGUrPxG1iM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyGUrPxG1iM I don't know what a better solution would be but I don't think this is it. And the documents and downloads folders are pretty arbitrary on Mac. Any user created folders don't get this protection. I do love the way that sandboxed apps only store stuff in one folder in the ~/Library/Containers folder though. Even non-MAS apps that are sandboxed have to do that. In fact the trick in this article doesn't even mention this, if you use it with a non-sandboxed app you're not guaranteed to uninstall everything for sure using this method.
    - jasonhansel 4y ago
      "Would you like to allow your toaster to make toast?" "Please grant your refrigerator permission to store milk."
      - Joeri 4y ago
        You jest, but I think a kosher refrigerator that somehow prevented dairy from finding its way into the meat section would find customers.
- crazygringo 4y ago
  Yeah I think the real problem is that deleting an app isn't uninstalling (which is sometimes a feature not a bug), but Apple provides no paradigm for actually uninstalling that deletes preferences too.
  - goalieca 4y ago
    They do on iOS.
    - DavideNL 4y ago
      Unfortunately, they don’t. There are many apps which after uninstalling, and reinstalling them weeks later, prompt you with: “Hello David, welcome back”, etc. I need to login again etc. (cache was cleared) but my settings are still there. This happens even when deleting the app from ALL devices connected to my AppleID.
      - easeout 4y ago
        On iOS the Documents and Library folders exist per application in a sandbox, so those can be deleted with the app binary. Preferences like location permissions are reset too. But some things persist, like the app's related keychain data, which might contain a user session. Apps have the choice of where they store things and therefore what behavior to give users in a delete and reinstall scenario. Of course any files saved in iCloud Drive or "On my iPhone" stay put, which users would expect. I think the value of retaining the keychain is related to 1. automatically deleting least recently used apps and restoring them when a user goes to launch them, and 2. restoring from encrypted backups, in which the downloaded apps are not backed up themselves, slowly install after the restore completes, and find the keychain data waiting for them. If I recall, not all methods of backup include the keychain, which I think was the difference between having to sign into every app again or just a few due to a new device's Secure Enclave. These days if you get a new device you'll have a much better time with the phone-to-phone migration assistant then a backup and restore.
        4y ago
pfp 4y ago
No. The user data, preferences etc under ~/Library/ belong to you - whether it's 3 kB of preference toggles or 3 decades of email. It would be "unbelievable" if a multibillion company decided to be helpful and erase your data just because you deleted the binary that created them (actually, it wouldn't, but let's not digress into how those companies are stripping away our agency by mobile-ossifying everything). The whole Mac idea was that there's no "uninstall process" with opaque windoze registries etc; what the Finder shows you is simple enough for an average user to understand. Like dragging an "Application" or a CD-ROM into the Trash to get rid of it. Of course they ruined all that with ~/Library/{Preferences,Application Whatever,Kitchen Sink}/. Turns out your UNIX with a human face ate its children afterall. With relish. Also, "uninstallable" means "cannot be installed"
- eyko 4y ago
  At least provide a user friendly way to manage it. For instance, offer the option to either delete, backup, or leave in place when uninstalling. For things left in place, have a GUI to view and manage them.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  >opaque windoze registries etc Thanks for demonstrating your lack of credibility. Uninstallers by and large only do the reverse of what an installer did by going through the install log and undoing what it did. This means any additional files made after the the installation that weren't properly appended to the log, any additional information added to the Registry that weren't properly appended to the log, and any user files created after installation (eg: save files) will not be touched by the uninstaller. Should everything be properly logged for clean uninstalling? Yes; Linux package managers are a decent example. But reality is not ideal, so we have to deal with practicality. This presumably is the case whether it's Windows, Mac, or Linux.
  - Aloha 4y ago
    Most windows installers do not bother to clean up /Program Data or ~/AppData Nor do most linux programs remove dot files when they go away.
miked85 4y ago
They are too busy working on allowing Safari to maximize as expected.
- vbezhenar 4y ago
  What're you talking about? Did Safari implement maximize functionality? Incredible if it's true.
  - miked85 4y ago
    Just a joke - I've never understood why literally every other app works, but not Safari.
cush 4y ago
It’s a tradeoff between an incredibly user-friendly install experience for non App Store apps, vs a clean uninstall experience. The OS doesn’t know what files that app created, thus can’t clean them up.
- klodolph 4y ago
  The OS also doesn’t know when you uninstall an app whether the app is really gone. You could have copied it to a network drive first, or maybe you have a different version of the app in a folder somewhere. Who knows?
  - riolu 4y ago
    Apps that install persistent services typically check if the .app bundle exists in applications so in most cases just trashing the .app is enough to stop any errant left overs from executing.
    - klodolph 4y ago
      What I mean is that you may have moved the app to a USB drive or something, and so the stuff in ~/Library should remain.
guestbest 4y ago
I wish there was an easy way to clear cache and uninstall devices in XCode
wkat4242 4y ago
~/Library contains stuff for lots of apps and they don't necessarily have to be in a folder with the name of the same bundle ID. Only sandboxed apps are much more strict about this.
amelius 4y ago
They can't do that because they would get sued for anti competitive practices by the creators of the third party app AppCleaner.
- sgerenser 4y ago
  I don’t know if this is a joke, but it sounds like you need to look up “Sherlocked” https://www.howtogeek.com/297651/what-does-it-mean-when-a-company-sherlocks-an-app/ https://www.howtogeek.com/297651/what-does-it-mean-when-a-co....
satysin 4y ago
This isn’t something Windows or Linux does either. If you delete an application the user data is not touched. For example on Windows if you grab a zip for an app and just put it in Program Files (or anywhere), run it then delete it there is nothing Windows does to clean up the files in AppData or entries in the registry. Same on Linux if you grab a tar.gz, extract it to /opt and use it then delete it. All the data in ~/.config etc remains. If the app developer providers an uninstaller it may clean up such data but that isn’t an OS feature. There are many macOS apps that come with a pkg installer and uninstaller that cleans up in much the same way as an installer on Windows. A little tip: if you use homebrew on macos you can use brew to force uninstall any application along with the zap argument and it will clean up most things. The app doesn’t have to have been installed via homebrew for this to work. So if you wanted to remove Obsidian that you had manually installed using the dmg you could do `brew remove --cask --force --zap obsidian` and it will remove the Obsidian .app, plist, cache files in Application Support, etc. You can also check the brew formula file which is just plain text to see exactly what it will remove during a zap which is quite handy.
vbezhenar 4y ago
No desktop OS has uninstall procedures. Both Windows and Linux software packages often will leave trash files scattered around as well. The only sane way to use desktop OS that I've found is to reinstall everything every 6-12 months and having some backup procedures to speed up configuration process.
daneel_w 4y ago
It's by design. The files are your preferences, not the application's preferences. A lot of people throw away the old app bundle when they download a new version of it for applications that don't update themselves. It would be an infuriating user experience and absolutely absurd design choice if dropping the bundle in the trash also erased the users' preferences.
suction 4y ago
[dead]

jrmg 4y ago

You can also just run apps from anywhere - network drives, removable disks, disk images etc., so the system can’t just delete settings for apps it’s currently unaware of.

skyyler 4y ago
Revo Uninstaller for windows manages to do this.
mattigames 4y ago
That's also Apple's fault isn't it? App data should fall into an predictable folder regardless of the location from where is ran, if for whatever reason the app needs to use a different folder it should be something developers have to go to multiple hurdles to implement (e.g. specify in a manifest what files and where will them be stored, and explicitly specify it they should be automatically deleted or not after moving the app to the trash)
- ryandrake 4y ago
  To be fair, the situation isn't much better on Windows or Linux. While at least they have a concept of uninstalling an application, you're still reliant on the developer actually getting it right and not missing some tempfile or something.
  - skissane 4y ago
    The filesystem doesn’t have rich enough metadata about temporary files. At least Windows has a file attribute for temporary files (FILE_ATTRIBUTE_TEMPORARY), although I’m uncertain how many apps actually set it on their temporary files; Linux/Unix/etc appears to have no real equivalent. I think ideally temporary files would have rich metadata - the ID of the process, session, and application/package which created them, and some kind of retention policy and expiry date. Of course, one could always use xattrs for that, but unless they are standardised few would use them. C library functions such as mkstemp/mkdtemp/etc could be enhanced to set metadata on temporary files. The OS package manager (apt/rpm/etc) could put an xattr on an executable with the UUID of the package, and then mkstemp could copy that to an xattr of all temporary files. Now if the FS also indexed xattrs, we could upon uninstall find all temp files owned by a given package and remove them. Many mainframe/minicomputer file systems support file expiry dates, which is an interesting feature which Unix missed.
- badsectoracula 4y ago
  Yeah and application bundle proplists could help with that too.
- jdminhbg 4y ago
  > That's also Apple's fault isn't it? Sure, but if they locked things down the way you’re proposing, people would absolutely lose their minds about the iOSification of macOS.
  - AbusiveHNAdmin 4y ago
    supporting uninstallation ≠ locking down
    - jdminhbg 4y ago
      Supporting uninstallation by restricting applications to a sandbox that can be cleaned up == locking down
      - AbusiveHNAdmin 4y ago
        Yep.
- goranmoomin 4y ago
  > App data should fall into an predictable folder regardless of the location from where is ran In fact, App Store apps are guaranteed to do that (by being in a closed sandbox); that's why Apple has an uninstallation procedure only for App Store apps. > specify in a manifest what files and where will them be stored, and explicitly specify it they should be automatically deleted or not after moving the app to the trash macOS tries to do that, and developers cry that macOS is becoming more and more closed. In fact, macOS already disallows all apps (including non-sandboxed apps) touching ~/Documents and ~/Downloads except for specific exceptions that the user grants.
  - wkat4242 4y ago
    Yeah the way they're doing this is a bit of a pain in the ass to be honest. Set up a new Mac and you have to do though tons of these popups. It causes popup fatigue and users start just clicking yes without even reading it. I've seen it many times. It defeats the purpose this way. It reminds me very much of how they made fun of Windows Vista in the past: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyGUrPxG1iM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyGUrPxG1iM I don't know what a better solution would be but I don't think this is it. And the documents and downloads folders are pretty arbitrary on Mac. Any user created folders don't get this protection. I do love the way that sandboxed apps only store stuff in one folder in the ~/Library/Containers folder though. Even non-MAS apps that are sandboxed have to do that. In fact the trick in this article doesn't even mention this, if you use it with a non-sandboxed app you're not guaranteed to uninstall everything for sure using this method.
  - jasonhansel 4y ago
    "Would you like to allow your toaster to make toast?" "Please grant your refrigerator permission to store milk."
    - Joeri 4y ago
      You jest, but I think a kosher refrigerator that somehow prevented dairy from finding its way into the meat section would find customers.
crazygringo 4y ago
Yeah I think the real problem is that deleting an app isn't uninstalling (which is sometimes a feature not a bug), but Apple provides no paradigm for actually uninstalling that deletes preferences too.
- goalieca 4y ago
  They do on iOS.
  - DavideNL 4y ago
    Unfortunately, they don’t. There are many apps which after uninstalling, and reinstalling them weeks later, prompt you with: “Hello David, welcome back”, etc. I need to login again etc. (cache was cleared) but my settings are still there. This happens even when deleting the app from ALL devices connected to my AppleID.
    - easeout 4y ago
      On iOS the Documents and Library folders exist per application in a sandbox, so those can be deleted with the app binary. Preferences like location permissions are reset too. But some things persist, like the app's related keychain data, which might contain a user session. Apps have the choice of where they store things and therefore what behavior to give users in a delete and reinstall scenario. Of course any files saved in iCloud Drive or "On my iPhone" stay put, which users would expect. I think the value of retaining the keychain is related to 1. automatically deleting least recently used apps and restoring them when a user goes to launch them, and 2. restoring from encrypted backups, in which the downloaded apps are not backed up themselves, slowly install after the restore completes, and find the keychain data waiting for them. If I recall, not all methods of backup include the keychain, which I think was the difference between having to sign into every app again or just a few due to a new device's Secure Enclave. These days if you get a new device you'll have a much better time with the phone-to-phone migration assistant then a backup and restore.
      - 4y ago

pfp 4y ago

No. The user data, preferences etc under ~/Library/ belong to you - whether it's 3 kB of preference toggles or 3 decades of email. It would be "unbelievable" if a multibillion company decided to be helpful and erase your data just because you deleted the binary that created them (actually, it wouldn't, but let's not digress into how those companies are stripping away our agency by mobile-ossifying everything). The whole Mac idea was that there's no "uninstall process" with opaque windoze registries etc; what the Finder shows you is simple enough for an average user to understand. Like dragging an "Application" or a CD-ROM into the Trash to get rid of it. Of course they ruined all that with ~/Library/{Preferences,Application Whatever,Kitchen Sink}/. Turns out your UNIX with a human face ate its children afterall. With relish. Also, "uninstallable" means "cannot be installed"

eyko 4y ago
At least provide a user friendly way to manage it. For instance, offer the option to either delete, backup, or leave in place when uninstalling. For things left in place, have a GUI to view and manage them.
Dalewyn 4y ago
>opaque windoze registries etc Thanks for demonstrating your lack of credibility. Uninstallers by and large only do the reverse of what an installer did by going through the install log and undoing what it did. This means any additional files made after the the installation that weren't properly appended to the log, any additional information added to the Registry that weren't properly appended to the log, and any user files created after installation (eg: save files) will not be touched by the uninstaller. Should everything be properly logged for clean uninstalling? Yes; Linux package managers are a decent example. But reality is not ideal, so we have to deal with practicality. This presumably is the case whether it's Windows, Mac, or Linux.
- Aloha 4y ago
  Most windows installers do not bother to clean up /Program Data or ~/AppData Nor do most linux programs remove dot files when they go away.

miked85 4y ago

They are too busy working on allowing Safari to maximize as expected.

vbezhenar 4y ago
What're you talking about? Did Safari implement maximize functionality? Incredible if it's true.
- miked85 4y ago
  Just a joke - I've never understood why literally every other app works, but not Safari.

cush 4y ago

It’s a tradeoff between an incredibly user-friendly install experience for non App Store apps, vs a clean uninstall experience. The OS doesn’t know what files that app created, thus can’t clean them up.

klodolph 4y ago
The OS also doesn’t know when you uninstall an app whether the app is really gone. You could have copied it to a network drive first, or maybe you have a different version of the app in a folder somewhere. Who knows?
- riolu 4y ago
  Apps that install persistent services typically check if the .app bundle exists in applications so in most cases just trashing the .app is enough to stop any errant left overs from executing.
  - klodolph 4y ago
    What I mean is that you may have moved the app to a USB drive or something, and so the stuff in ~/Library should remain.

guestbest 4y ago

I wish there was an easy way to clear cache and uninstall devices in XCode

wkat4242 4y ago

~/Library contains stuff for lots of apps and they don't necessarily have to be in a folder with the name of the same bundle ID. Only sandboxed apps are much more strict about this.

amelius 4y ago

They can't do that because they would get sued for anti competitive practices by the creators of the third party app AppCleaner.

sgerenser 4y ago
I don’t know if this is a joke, but it sounds like you need to look up “Sherlocked” https://www.howtogeek.com/297651/what-does-it-mean-when-a-company-sherlocks-an-app/ https://www.howtogeek.com/297651/what-does-it-mean-when-a-co....

satysin 4y ago

This isn’t something Windows or Linux does either. If you delete an application the user data is not touched. For example on Windows if you grab a zip for an app and just put it in Program Files (or anywhere), run it then delete it there is nothing Windows does to clean up the files in AppData or entries in the registry. Same on Linux if you grab a tar.gz, extract it to /opt and use it then delete it. All the data in ~/.config etc remains. If the app developer providers an uninstaller it may clean up such data but that isn’t an OS feature. There are many macOS apps that come with a pkg installer and uninstaller that cleans up in much the same way as an installer on Windows. A little tip: if you use homebrew on macos you can use brew to force uninstall any application along with the zap argument and it will clean up most things. The app doesn’t have to have been installed via homebrew for this to work. So if you wanted to remove Obsidian that you had manually installed using the dmg you could do `brew remove --cask --force --zap obsidian` and it will remove the Obsidian .app, plist, cache files in Application Support, etc. You can also check the brew formula file which is just plain text to see exactly what it will remove during a zap which is quite handy.

vbezhenar 4y ago

No desktop OS has uninstall procedures. Both Windows and Linux software packages often will leave trash files scattered around as well. The only sane way to use desktop OS that I've found is to reinstall everything every 6-12 months and having some backup procedures to speed up configuration process.

daneel_w 4y ago

It's by design. The files are your preferences, not the application's preferences. A lot of people throw away the old app bundle when they download a new version of it for applications that don't update themselves. It would be an infuriating user experience and absolutely absurd design choice if dropping the bundle in the trash also erased the users' preferences.

suction 4y ago

[dead]