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Possible to delete Stocks and Home apps?

O

OceanFrog

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 19, 2009
177
2
Just installed Mojave on my MacBook Air mid-2012.

I've tried to uninstall the Stocks and Home apps using AppCleaner. It looks like the apps had some files associated with them removed (e.g. the com.apple.stocks.account file from Stocks), but the apps are still there and still seem to load fully and work.

So my question is can these apps be uninstalled/removed? And have I done any damage by removing some of the associated files by using AppCleaner?
 
idmean said:
Why would you remove them? If you don’t need them, just don’t use them. Disabling SIP in order to delete them doesn’t seem like a very reasonable idea.
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Because its blotware, takes space and something like stocks app will never get used by me. Why defend something like this? It was a big issue on iOS and they have gone back to the dark ages w this after moving fwd w removal of apps on iOS
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Weaselboy said:
Those default apps are all protected by System Integrity Protection (SIP) so you will not be able to delete them unless you temporarily disable SIP. If you search there are lots of sites that will walk you through that.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204899
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ridiculous excuse since you can delete pages/keynote/etc, stock app doesn't need to be protected by SIP for example... back to the dark ages of forced bloatware
 
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Carlanga said:
ridiculous excuse since you can delete pages/keynote/etc, stock app doesn't need to be protected by SIP for example...
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I think the difference is those are not installed as part of the OS, where the others are. If you accidentally delete one of the stock apps you would need to reinstall the whole OS. Where with the others you could just reinstall from the App Store.
 
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Weaselboy said:
I think the difference is those are not installed as part of the OS, where the others are. If you accidentally delete one of the stock apps you would need to reinstall the whole OS. Where with the others you could just reinstall from the App Store.
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Yes, but why make them part of the OS and not downloadable? It's not like everyone uses the stock app nor uses Siri for their home automation.
 
Carlanga said:
Yes, but why make them part of the OS and not downloadable? It's not like everyone uses the stock app nor uses Siri for their home automation.
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I dunno.... I'm guessing they want every Mac install to be the same and support all the same apps. For example, I saw a forum post yesterday where someone linked to an article in the News app (I did not know you could do that), and if you click Safari asks if it is okay to open the News app to view the article. So if they don't include the News app, the link won't work. That's just my guess though.
 
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Weaselboy said:
I dunno.... I'm guessing they want every Mac install to be the same and support all the same apps. For example, I saw a forum post yesterday where someone linked to an article in the News app (I did not know you could do that), and if you click Safari asks if it is okay to open the News app to view the article. So if they don't include the News app, the link won't work. That's just my guess though.
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Okay, so what happens if someone goes to open that link on their iPhone and they've deleted News from that?
 
maverick808 said:
Okay, so what happens if someone goes to open that link on their iPhone and they've deleted News from that?
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It either opens a web page (like in countries without the News app) or it might bring you to the app store to download the app (like if you remove Apple Maps but you try to open an address link).
 
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cruisin said:
It either opens a web page (like in countries without the News app) or it might bring you to the app store to download the app (like if you remove Apple Maps but you try to open an address link).
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Exactly, there is a solution that works fine when the app isn't installed on iOS, so why not just do the same on macOS? Why is it only macOS that is stuck with apps you can't delete?
 
maverick808 said:
Exactly, there is a solution that works fine when the app isn't installed on iOS, so why not just do the same on macOS? Why is it only macOS that is stuck with apps you can't delete?
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You need to ask someone in charge or leave feedback on their website. But macOS (even in the OS X days) has always had apps that cannot be easily removed (like iTunes), its just that now they protected by SIP where before you could probably delete them in terminal. After many years, I doubt they will change.

I don't think you can remove the 3D paint app in Windows (not without jumping through hoops) so every system has its annoyances. All that is left is to either accept this or learn to use a Linux-based desktop (which also has its own annoyances).
 
ivnj said:
Howmuch space do these apps actually use? Because with a 1TB HDD that is plenty. So no need to remove anything. Even a 256GB SSD is plenty.
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Is still bloatware because it takes UI space. I have a 125GB MBA, the stocks app shows as 1mb, news is almost 10mb (who knows what else behind hidden folders though), but doesn't matter what size. Imagine you open the applications folder and see 100 apps that you can't remove that are 1mb. They don't take space but they are annoying and bloatware, same thing here. If one doesn't complain now you will go back to the days where nothing apple made can't be removed from your device.
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mactech96 said:
If yall want to remove News, Stocks, Home, etc, WITHOUT turning off SIP, a friend and I just posted some instructions to https://github.com/banzr/RemoveMojaveApps.
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That's cool but I wonder how many hidden folders in other areas are there to make these apps work.
 
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My question is, can it be removed safely? It did not use up too much space but I just don't like having something installed but unusable.

Or will I be able to invest in stocks through this app?
 
those 2 apps mentioned by the OP add up to 6mb, ie almost nothing. why open the apps folder to find apps? you can: put things in the dock, use launchpad, use spotlight... lots of ways to get to things without scrolling thru the Applications folder. i mean, i would have deleted Chess thru every version of OSX/mac OS... but it's not really important.
 
All these are crapware even if it takes less space. Nobody can claim they are necessary for proper functioning of the os. Apple forcing this on all users should not be defended.
 
The first thing I do with all my new installs is delete everything I will never use.
Chess.app
FaceTime.app
Messages.app
Notes.app
PhotoBooth.app
Photos.app
Siri.app
Stickies.app
iBooks
Stocks
Home
Game Center, and maybe others I can't remember

I use Terminal and the command "sudo rm -rf" followed by a space and then drag and drop the file from the Finder.
I do have Sip disabled, this allows me to run the newer Operating sysytems on my old Classic MacPro.
I have never experienced any issues after deleting these apps.
My reason for doing this is "because I can":D
 
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jbarley said:
The first thing I do with all my new installs is delete everything I will never use.
Chess.app
FaceTime.app
Messages.app
Notes.app
PhotoBooth.app
Photos.app
Siri.app
Stickies.app
iBooks
Stocks
Home
Game Center, and maybe others I can't remember

I use Terminal and the command "sudo rm -rf" followed by a space and then drag and drop the file from the Finder.
I do have Sip disabled, this allows me to run the newer Operating sysytems on my old Classic MacPro.
I have never experienced any issues after deleting these apps.
My reason for doing this is "because I can":D
Click to expand...

To each his own...
 
Carlanga said:
Is still bloatware because it takes UI space. I have a 125GB MBA, the stocks app shows as 1mb, news is almost 10mb (who knows what else behind hidden folders though), but doesn't matter what size.
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These apps are not bloatware. They're small, lean, and very useful in the base OS so can't be classed as bloated. I doubt you'd notice the difference between the small disk footprint.
 
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dogslobber said:
These apps are not bloatware. They're small, lean, and very useful in the base OS so can't be classed as bloated. I doubt you'd notice the difference between the small disk footprint.
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They are IMO and a stock app is not needed for any base OS. Is not just space, but the resources it can take running in the background refreshing info etc.
 
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Carlanga said:
They are IMO and a stock app is not needed for any base OS. Is not just space, but the resources it can take running in the background refreshing info etc.
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You’ll be fine with it as the stocks app is only a few MB in size and uses few cpu cycles when running. You won’t notice it at all if you don’t use it and don’t use it but if you do you can quickly fire it up to see how much AAPL stock has soared recently. Enjoy.
 
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