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ndmccormack

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 18, 2004
60
0
London, UK
maybe I'm just being stupid, but is there anyway to uninstall all the files that various applications/preference panels etc create...

I realise that i can just delete the application folder, but thre will always be files scattered around that would have been used as preferences, file system mods, system preferences panels etc etc...

or is this already built into osx...

cheers
niall
 
Normally you can just delete the application. Apart from their preferences file, they usually don't have any other files (unlike Windows, which I'm guessing you're used to). Leaving a preferences file there won't hurt at all, since they're usually only a few KB and they won't affect other applications. For the few things that do install things (eg prefpanes), you can go through your Library yourself to delete them. However most applications that install things around the system have either a) an uninstaller, or b) a list of installed files in its documentation.

Some general locations of various files follows:

For preferences, go to Home/Library/Preferences/ and delete the file(s), usually in the format "com.[company].[app name].plist".
Preference Panes are In Library/PreferencePanes. They might be in your user library or computer library.
A few applications make their own folder in your Library, eg Home/Library/[app name]. Some others do the same but put a folder in Application Support. Eg Home/Library/Application Support/[app name] OR Home/Library/Application Support/[company name]. Again, these could be in either Library.
You can also try doing a search for the application name to find where it's put its files. This won't always find all of them, but will usually find at least some.

That should cover most of it. Just make sure you stay away from the system library (/System/Library).
 
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