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UNinstalling Apps & .dmg

T

Toby Goodbar

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 8, 2006
400
0
this is probly a stupid question, but i'm a mac newbie from windows.

anything i want to install comes in a dmg. which is the mac equivalent of an exe in windows right?

what does ejecting the dmg do? and can't seem to figure out what i'm doing when i install a program and then try to delete the installer package. i end up deleting the app or i f@#! it up so it won't work.

i feel really stupid asking this, so a little patience please. i was a real windows know it all but hated all the crashing and had to switch.
 
+Think of a dmg as a folder, when you open it, you are opening the folder, and when you eject it, your just closing the folder.

+when installing a program from the dmg, take the application that is inside the dmg and simply drag it to the application folder.

+To delete the "install package" just eject the dmg and drag the dmg and any .zips you had associated with the application to the trash

+to uninstal a program, just simply drag the application from the application folder to the trash.
 
A dmg is not at all like an exe, it's a file that is a "virtual drive." Like a CD-ROM, but in a file. It's the way Mac software is commonly distributed. When you double-click it, a white drive icon shows up. In order to install an app, you need to drag it out of this white drive icon, and then you can eject this white drive icon, and delete the dmg.

To uninstall, simply delete whatever it was that you dragged out of the dmg. This will leave a few residual files behind in your Library/Preferences and/or Library/Application Support or other folders, but the files left behind are harmless and rarely take up much space. You can delete them yourself if you can find them, otherwise an app like AppZapper is useful.
 
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