Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

sageman72

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 16, 2015
22
19
so I don't really use the Music, Podcasts and TV apps, is it ok to remove them or are they so imbedded into macOS it would just cause trouble?
 

kohlson

macrumors 68020
Apr 23, 2010
2,425
737
It's unlikely you could all traces of these, and even then it would be without inadvertently affecting something else. Are you running short on space?
 

chabig

macrumors G4
Sep 6, 2002
11,449
9,321
Don’t. It’s ok to keep software on your computer that you don’t use, but especially software that is part of the standard system installation.
 
  • Like
Reactions: revmacian

sageman72

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 16, 2015
22
19
not absolutely needed due to space or anything no, it's just my fetish for having as clean a system as possible that's kicking in I guess..I´ll ignore it, thanks
 

revmacian

macrumors 68000
Oct 20, 2018
1,745
1,468
USA
not absolutely needed due to space or anything no, it's just my fetish for having as clean a system as possible that's kicking in I guess..I´ll ignore it, thanks
I know how you feel.. I'd like to delete those apps as well as News. I don't think it would hurt anything to put them in a folder in the back of Launcher or the Applications tab of Finder. Might help you a bit.
 
  • Like
Reactions: sageman72

NoBoMac

Moderator
Staff member
Jul 1, 2014
6,285
4,974
Yeah, just leave them be. Some of them, might not be an issue if deleted, others...

Taking a wild guess here, as have not tried to mess around with the stock apps. The stock apps are all in /System/Applications folder, except for Safari, which is installed in the user space /Applications.

Anything in /System/Applications is under System Integrity Protection (SIP). Additionally, if you have an SSD, it's in APFS format. The System level stuff is in a read-only partition. From what I've seen on the interwebs, at minimum, need to disable SIP, and might have to stay in Recovery Mode and mount the read-only partition as read/write. Command line to delete things.

And once gone, if want/need to recover what was deleted, need to re-install the OS, as the stock apps are not in App Store.
 

revmacian

macrumors 68000
Oct 20, 2018
1,745
1,468
USA
Anything in /System/Applications is under System Integrity Protection (SIP). Additionally, if you have an SSD, it's in APFS format. The System level stuff is in a read-only partition. From what I've seen on the interwebs, at minimum, need to disable SIP, and might have to stay in Recovery Mode and mount the read-only partition as read/write. Command line to delete things.
I ran nothing but GNU/Linux and BSD for almost 20 years and what you mentioned seems like a lot of work for very little gain. I realize it can be done, but my mind says "why bother?".. especially since there is no guarantee that the work won't cause issues elsewhere.
 

sashavegas

macrumors regular
Jul 11, 2018
122
86
that what i did

Code:
#!/bin/bash

# IMPORTANT: You will need to disable SIP aka Rootless in order to fully execute this script, you can reenable it after.

    sudo rm -rf /Applications/Home.app
    echo "[OK] Home"
    
    sudo rm -rf /Applications/Dashboard.app
    echo "[OK] Dashboard.app"
    
    sudo rm -rf /Applications/FaceTime.app
    echo "[OK] FaceTime.app"
    
    sudo rm -rf /Applications/News.app
    echo "[OK] News.app"
    
    sudo rm -rf /Applications/Messages.app
    echo "[OK] Messages.app"
    
    sudo rm -rf /Applications/Siri.app
    echo "[OK] Siri.app"
    
    sudo rm -rf /Applications/Photos.app
    echo "[OK] Photos.app"
    
    sudo rm -rf /Applications/Stocks.app
    echo "[OK] Stocks.app"
    
    sudo rm -rf /Applications/VoiceMemos.app
    echo "[OK] VoiceMemos.app"
    
    sudo rm -rf /Applications/Stickies.app
    echo "[OK] Stickies.app"
    
    sudo rm -rf /Applications/Maps.app
    echo "[OK] Maps.app"
    
    sudo rm -rf /Applications/Photo\ Booth.app
    echo "[OK] Photos.app"
    
    sudo rm -rf /Applications/QuickTime\ Player.app
    echo "[OK] QuickTime"

and everything is working just fine
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • Like
Reactions: sageman72
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.