We live in a golden age of programs. Marketing tales, various spam updates and the latest extensions pour out from every window. In all this, it’s best to learn how to properly remove programs, because moving to the Recycle Bin is no solution.
Why? Because this treatment leaves some programs. And leaving these parts wastes gigabytes of your Mac’s disk space on an unnecessary mess. You definitely have better ideas to use this place. Therefore, until Apple decides to do everything correctly and create a better way to completely uninstall programs on Macs, we have good advice for you to manually uninstall. This is to ensure great Mac performance every day.
Uninstall applications using the trash
The easiest way to uninstall an application or program from your MacBook is to use the trash in the dock.
This method of removing items from your Mac will work with programs downloaded from the Internet.
Also remember: if you try to delete something but the trash icon is grayed out, it means that the application or file is still open.
- Open a Finder window.
- Click Applications to display all installed applications on your computer.
- Click the application you want to uninstall.
- Click File from the menu in the upper left corner of the screen.
- Click Move to trash.
- Click and hold the trash can icon.
- Click Empty trash.
How to delete Left Behind files
The above method does not delete application preferences. Erase the application and leave the preference files left in the library folders. In most cases, these files will take up very little space and will not cause problems. Preferences will still be available on the Mac – it’s convenient if you uninstall the application to replace it with a newer version of the same application, or if you reinstall the application later. It will keep all your preferences once you have installed them.
If you absolutely need to delete these files (say, if you want to reset the application to the default settings), you can use a handy application called AppCleaner to completely uninstall the application along with all additional files. Just run AppCleaner, search for the application in the main window and click on it, then click “Delete” in the pop-up window that appears.
Uninstall applications using the uninstaller
Some applications may include the Uninstall tool in the application folder.
These are often larger applications such as Adobe Creative Cloud or Valve’s Steam client.
It is also worth mentioning that many uninstall tools will open a separate dialog with tips.
- Open a Finder window.
- Click Applications to display all the applications installed on your computer.
- Click to select the application you want to uninstall.
- Double-click the uninstallation tool inside the folder.
- Follow the instructions on the screen to uninstall the application.
