Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Best uninstaller app for Mac
- Thread starter Dr. McKay
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Working well for me. Overall, the app does an excellent job, albeit there are times when it can't fully uninstall a app, and you have to do a manual clean up.
What is the exact name of Appcleaner and where can I DL it? Doesn't seem to be on the mac app store. Got a link to a trusted site?
EDIT: Is this it? https://freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/
EDIT: Is this it? https://freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/
AppCleaner still seems like a good option. I tried manual, but you can't be certain that you've got everything.
Stay safe,
Peter
Stay safe,
Peter
Actually, the reverse is true. Manual deletion is more complete than using apps such as AppCleaner. Apps like that tend to leave behind more than they remove, in many cases. Still, if you prefer to use an app, that's your choice.
Not sure I understand. Deleting manually means you have to manually look for files associated with the application. Since they may not be tagged with the application name this becomes an impossible task.
My experience has been AppCleaner is just doing the same thing the manual method does. That is if you have an app called Skitch, AppCleaner searches for all files with Skitch in the name and offers a list for removal. Same as the manual method. But you are right, neither method will find stray files that do not have the app name in them.
For example if I have want to remove the app Cookie and there is a plist file that does not contain the word Cookie but is called sweetpproductions.plist (sweetpproductions is the dev) neither method will find that plist file.
I used to use AppZapper which was good but after installing CleanMyMacX I much prefer it's installer. I especially like that with LaunchBar I can tye in the application name, hit tab and send the action to CleanMyMacX and it uninstalls it.
Seems logical. But if I drop Adobe Acrobat onto AppCleaner it finds files which do not have Acrobat or even Adobe in the name?
That would be a bad reason to delete the file though, so I hope the app is smarter than that!
I've learned a lot in this thread. Just got a new Mac and installing everything fresh, so I'm giving AppCleaner a shot as I experiment.
Last edited:
I use appcleaner first, then I do a couple of quick Finder searches using the app and developer name with ’include System Files’ added to the search.
CMM may have been improved over the years, but for a long time had the reputation of "cleaning" too much. How long is a "long time" (roughly) and what version are you using now? (That could be critical information for someone considering installing it.)
If I am not mistaken, Clean My has gone to subscription since this thread was started.
I remember how bad CMM was years ago and for that reason, I won't even consider it. It was awful.
I have been using App Cleaner & Uninstaller from Nektony for a few years now.
It does a great job! https://nektony.com/mac-app-cleaner
It does a great job! https://nektony.com/mac-app-cleaner
I've tried out a bunch of them and am most happy with Remove-It:
The utility was previously called iTrash.Home
www.osxbytes.com
I use Remove-It too. The last few versions the release notes have been blank, have you been seeing them?