Re:Making macOS Apps Uninstallable
by satysin on Saturday February 18, 2023 @04:50AM
(#34845549)
This isn’t something Windows or Linux does either. If you delete an application the user data is not touched.
Eg on Windows if you grab a zip of an app and just put it in Program Files and run it there is nothing in Windows does to clean up the files in AppData or data in the registry if you just delete the exe etc you extracted from the zip file.
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.
Eg on Windows if you grab a zip of an app and just put it in Program Files and run it there is nothing in Windows does to clean up the files in AppData or data in the registry if you just delete the exe etc you extracted from the zip file.
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.