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How did Chrome get on my new Mac?
- Thread starter kreasonos
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I set up as new so there's no way someone else installed it. Is it possible to check logs and see when it was installed?
It HAD to have been manually installed unless the device is being managed with something like Jamf.
Hold down the OPTION (⌥) key then press the Apple icon in the top left menu bar. Select Software, then Applications.
That will list out a whole slew of info.
Try the About This Mac next System Report the Software option then Installations.
This is not possible. I clicked info on the chrome application and it says it was created Aug 22 at 11:16pm? Unless it's just recording when I last updated Chrome on another PC? I just took this Mac out of the box today shipped to my door from Apple.com so there's no way this computer was used before. I set it up as new so there's no way Chrome was already installed.
Checked there, Edge is listed (which i did install) but Chrome is not. However, I did install Geekbench 5 and that is not listed there.
Well then I will go with drive by install by one of those applications or another that had it bundled in there.
Sorry, for some reason (not sure why) I was thinking maybe the OP found a folder that said Chrome, not the actual application. The app had to have been installed somehow. There's no way it came preinstalled on the machine.
I checked my google account which verified a sign in using my google account when I received the machine this morning, however, could that indicate a sign in to my google account in safari or would that indicate a sign in from chrome?
That log only reflects software packages that employ the Installer app, Mac App Store, and system updates.
Anything that is dragged and dropped from a disk image, or uncompressed and ready-to-use won't be reflected there.
MS Edge comes as a .pkg, so it reflects the former. Chrome is a .dmg, and the latter.
Should also add that Google's Keystone auto-updater framework can result in bad mojo, as Avid users discovered last Fall, so keeping any and all Google apps from one's Mac isn't a bad idea.
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Ok, that makes more sense as to why i couldn't find chrome in the log. How can I find when it was installed then?
Edit: I think I may have found a solution. How can I view the Safari download log with time stamps? If chrome was installed it had to have been installed through safari.
I'm not aware of any way to know when a ready-to-run app was "installed."
You can try to determine when it was first run by the timestamps of the prefs files/folders it writes.
But, assuming you have Gatekeeper enabled, it would be very obvious the first time it tried to run, as you'd have to grant permission by dismissing the dialog.
And even if Safari downloaded the disk image and automatically mounted it, Chrome would still have to be manually copied to the drive to perform the installation.
Granted, there have been instances in the past where software download aggregator sites have surreptitiously added piggyback payloads of software when using their installers, or had malware link redirects to phony installers.
But on the whole, it's hard to imagine an app finding its way onto the computer without some sort of notice.
You can try to determine when it was first run by the timestamps of the prefs files/folders it writes.
But, assuming you have Gatekeeper enabled, it would be very obvious the first time it tried to run, as you'd have to grant permission by dismissing the dialog.
And even if Safari downloaded the disk image and automatically mounted it, Chrome would still have to be manually copied to the drive to perform the installation.
Granted, there have been instances in the past where software download aggregator sites have surreptitiously added piggyback payloads of software when using their installers, or had malware link redirects to phony installers.
But on the whole, it's hard to imagine an app finding its way onto the computer without some sort of notice.
If you have Chrome
and
If you DON'T WANT Chrome on your computer
then
Use the free "AppCleaner" utility to get rid of it.
Get AppCleaner here:
and
If you DON'T WANT Chrome on your computer
then
Use the free "AppCleaner" utility to get rid of it.
Get AppCleaner here: