How to Forcibly Remove an Application on Mac

• Dec 29, 2018
• By Kyle Nichols

Sometimes an application could be installed along with another product you are using. You may be wondering how to uninstall the application, if it was not your original intention to get it. And you might not know that after you drag it to the Trash, there are still some components left on your Mac, and you need to find and delete them to realize the complete removal. How to do that? In the rest of this article, I will guide you through the whole process with some details explained. Then you know how to correctly uninstall an application and others you don’t need.

1. Find the program
Browse the Application folder or Desktop, see if you can find the one you want to remove. This is just like you see those app icons on your iPhone/iPad: some applications are represented by only a single icon (e.g. Mozilla Firefox), while some are classified by a folder of multiple icons (e.g. Microsoft Office). If it doesn’t show on the Desktop, go to the upper left corner of the screen, click “Go” on the Finder, select “Applications”, then browse for it again.

2. Trash
Drag its icon to the Trash, which is on the right end of the Dock (quickly move it to the trash by pressing Cmd + Del). When you release the left mouse button, it sounds like the application being scrunched up, but actually it will stay until you empty the Trash.

3. Unhide the User Library folder
To ensure the complete removal, it would be better to unhide the Library folder permanently. Open Finder, and navigate to Applications – Utilities – Terminal (double-click to launch).

Type “chflags nohidden ~/Library” into Terminal (without the quotation marks), and press “Return” on your keyboard to run the command.

4. Finder – Go – Library
In the entire removal process, the Library folder could be a blind spot to many users. So this is teaching you how to delete the Support and Preference Files from it, which are those left behind after you uninstall an application. Usually they are very small, so if you attempt to reinstall the application, you can keep them. Otherwise, just do the following to clean them out.

In the upper-left corner of the screen, hold the “Option” key on your keyboard, click “Go” on the Finder, and select “Library” to open the Library folder.

5. Browse – Trash
Under ~/Library/, ~/Library/Preferences/, and ~Library/Application Support/, look for the files or folders with the name of the application or its vendor.

Then right-click on it, select “Move to Trash” to delete it. If you can’t “Empty Trash” right away, restart your Mac and try again. This is how you can manually remove an application from your Mac. If you have any questions about the instructions or anything you want to share, leave your comment below.

Have a nice day!