Remove Folders From Old Apps From Library Mac

May 14, 2012  Thanks for the reply Turingtest2, but I dont agree with your comment. Based on the evidence, the folder I added about a month ago, is being looked to by iTunes as material I added to is yesterday are showing up in iTunes today, without me doing anything more than opening iTunes - therefore from the evidence, iTunes is looking at certain forlders and is assuming any content included.

Optimized Storage in macOS Sierra and later* can save space by storing your content in iCloud and making it available on demand. When storage space is needed, files, photos, films, email attachments and other files that you seldom use are stored in iCloud automatically. Each file stays right where you last saved it, and downloads when you open it. Files that you’ve used recently remain on your Mac, along with optimised versions of your photos.

* If you haven't yet upgraded to macOS Sierra or later, learn about other ways to free up storage space.

9to5Mac is brought to you by CleanMyMac X.Find hidden junk, large old folders, unused apps, and heavy memory consumers. You can also use CleanMyMac X to remove malware, unwanted pop-ups, and virus. Files from a failed or removed installation take up disk space and can cause problems when you install or run a newer version of the Adobe application. Delete files from a previous Adobe application installation To delete files from a previous Adobe application installation, do the following: If the. Jul 31, 2016  Plug /Library/Mail/V2 into the box and press Enter. Right-click or Control-click the folder with the name of your email account and select Move to Trash. You can then empty your trash to free up all those gigabytes. If you have multiple email accounts with cached emails you want to remove, you should delete each corresponding folder. Delete files and folders on Mac. At any time, you can get rid of files, folders, and other items that you no longer need. You start by dragging items to the Trash in the. Summary: This post describes easy ways to remove / delete Mac leftover files. One of the best tools to remove Mac leftover files and other unwanted apps and large files from Mac is Stellar SpeedUp Mac. Uninstalling programs and applications from a computer is quite common and rather straightforward. Oct 15, 2018 There are many reasons we need to delete apps on Mac but most apps refuse to uninstall, in this guide, we will give 3 ways to completely and force to remove unwanted apps from Mac in order to free up your Mac’s space and make your Mac running at full power.

Find out how much storage is available on your Mac

Choose Apple menu  > About This Mac, then click Storage. This is an overview of available storage space on your Mac, as well as the space used by different categories of files:

Click the Manage button to open the Storage Management window, pictured below. (The Manage button is available only in macOS Sierra or later.)

Manage storage on your Mac

The Storage Management window offers recommendations for optimising your storage. If some recommendations are already turned on, you will see fewer recommendations.


Store in iCloud

Click the Store in iCloud button, then choose from these options:

  • Desktop and Documents. Store all files from these two locations in iCloud Drive. When storage space is needed, only the files you recently opened are kept on your Mac, so that you can easily work offline. Files stored only in iCloud show a download icon , which you can double-click to download the original file. Learn more about this feature.
  • Photos. Store all original, full-resolution photos and videos in iCloud Photos. When storage space is needed, only space-saving (optimised) versions of photos are kept on your Mac. To download the original photo or video, just open it.
  • Messages. Store all messages and attachments in iCloud. When storage space is needed, only the messages and attachments you recently opened are kept on your Mac. Learn more about Messages in iCloud.

Storing files in iCloud uses the storage space in your iCloud storage plan. If you reach or exceed your iCloud storage limit, you can either buy more iCloud storage or make more iCloud storage available. iCloud storage starts at 50GB for $0.99 (USD) a month, and you can purchase additional storage directly from your Apple device. Learn more about prices in your region.

Optimise Storage

Click the Optimise button, then choose from these options.

  • Automatically remove watched films and TV shows. When storage space is needed, films or TV shows that you purchased from the iTunes Store and already watched are removed from your Mac. Click the download icon next to a film or TV show to download it again.
  • Download only recent attachments. Mail automatically downloads only the attachments that you recently received. You can manually download any attachments at any time by opening the email or attachment, or saving the attachment to your Mac.
  • Don't automatically download attachments. Mail downloads an attachment only when you open the email or attachment, or save the attachment to your Mac.

Optimising storage for films, TV shows and email attachments doesn't require iCloud storage space.

Empty Trash Automatically

Empty Trash Automatically permanently deletes files that have been in the Trash for more than 30 days.

Reduce Clutter

Reduce Clutter helps you to identify large files and files you might no longer need. Click the Review Files button, then choose any of the file categories in the sidebar, such as Applications, Documents, Music Creation or Trash.

You can delete the files in some categories directly from this window. Other categories show the total storage space used by the files in each app. You can then open the app and decide whether to delete files from within it.

Learn how to redownload apps, music, films, TV shows and books.

Where to find the settings for each feature

The button for each recommendation in the Storage Management window affects one or more settings in other apps. You can also control those settings directly within each app.

  • If you're using macOS Catalina, choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, click Apple ID, then select iCloud in the sidebar: Store in iCloud turns on the Optimise Mac Storage setting on the right. Then click Options next to iCloud Drive: Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders setting. To turn off iCloud Drive entirely, deselect iCloud Drive.
    In macOS Mojave or earlier, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click iCloud, then click Options next to iCloud Drive. Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders and Optimise Mac Storage settings.
  • In Photos, choose Photos > Preferences, then click iCloud. Store in iCloud selects iCloud Photos and Optimise Mac Storage.
  • In Messages, choose Messages > Preferences, then click iMessage. Store in iCloud selects Enable Messages in iCloud.
  • If you're using macOS Catalina, open the Apple TV app, choose TV > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Files. Optimise Storage selects “Automatically delete watched films and TV shows”.
    In macOS Mojave or earlier, open iTunes, choose iTunes > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Advanced. Optimise Storage selects “Automatically delete watched films and TV shows”.
  • In Mail, choose Mail > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Accounts. In the Account Information section on the right, Optimise Storage sets the Download Attachments menu to either Recent or None.

Empty Trash Automatically: From the Finder, choose Finder > Preferences, then click Advanced. Empty Trash Automatically selects “Remove items from the Trash after 30 days”.

Other ways that macOS helps automatically save space

With macOS Sierra or later, your Mac automatically takes these additional steps to save storage space:

  • Detects duplicate downloads in Safari, keeping only the most recent version of the download
  • Reminds you to delete used app installers
  • Removes old fonts, languages and dictionaries that aren't being used
  • Clears caches, logs and other unnecessary data when storage space is needed

How to free up storage space manually

Even without using the Optimised Storage features of Sierra or later, you can take other steps to make more storage space available: Does linux on mac come with sys library account.

  • Music, films and other media can use a lot of storage space. Learn how to delete music, films and TV shows from your device.
  • Delete other files that you no longer need by moving them to the Trash, then emptying the Trash. The Downloads folder is good place to look for files that you might no longer need.
  • Move files to an external storage device.
  • Compress files.
  • Delete unneeded email: In the Mail app, choose Mailbox > Erase Junk Mail. If you no longer need the email in your Trash mailbox, choose Mailbox > Erase Deleted Items.

Learn more

  • When you duplicate a file on an APFS-formatted volume, that file doesn't use additional storage space on the volume. Deleting a duplicate file frees up only the space required by any data you might have added to the duplicate. If you no longer need any copies of the file, you can recover all of the storage space by deleting both the duplicate and the original file.
  • If you're using a pro app and Optimise Mac Storage, learn how to make sure that your projects are always on your Mac and able to access their files.

Quick question – how do you uninstall programs on Mac?

If your answer is to drag the app to the Trash, we’re sorry to say that you’ve been doing it wrong.

You probably know or guess that you can remove apps by dragging them to the Trash bin, but it is not quite so. Dragging normal files like documents and movies to the Trash works fine. But doing the same for apps leaves gigabytes of leftover junk files on your hard drive. We’re going to show you what gets left behind and what you can do to completely uninstall apps from here on out.

How to uninstall programs on Mac

If you are trying to delete an old application, reinstall a corrupted software or just free up disk space on your Mac, removing all components of the program is important. These include the app, its preferences and support files, and sometimes other hidden files.

To completely uninstall a program on Mac you have to choose one of three options:

  • Using Trash.
  • Using Launchpad.
  • Using a native uninstaller

The ways mentioned above include navigating your Mac’s in search of the apps you want to remove and then locating their remaining data. The latter can take even more place than the app itself and can be stored anywhere in your folders.

I prefer clearing my Mac from apps using a special software made for this particular task - CleanMyMac X. It’s Uninstaller feature, is an app-killer that sweeps away any program you don’t want on your Mac and clears remaining junk.

Now let’s go ahead and delete some apps!

1. How to delete apps on Mac using Trash

Whether you're running macOS Catalina or an earlier macOS, like Mojave or Sierra, the process of manually uninstalling remains relatively similar. Here’s what you need to do:

  1. Open Finder.
  2. Go to Applications.
  3. Choose the app you want to delete.
  4. Press Command + Delete (⌘⌫).
  5. Open Trash.
  6. Click the Empty button in the upper-right corner of the window.

And the app is gone.

Even uninstalling apps on macOS Catalina requires getting rid of leftovers, despite the fact that it's the latest and the most sophisticated system for Mac. Apple has done such a good job on macOS 10.14 but left this unfortunate issue unresolved for another year.

To completely remove programs from Mac manually, you have to find all the associated files that come along with the app. That means not just dragging the app icon to the Trash from your Applications folder, but searching the depths of the system files on your Mac.

We’re going to reveal the locations of the most common files that are associated with apps. To remove the app leftovers from your Mac just navigate to each of these folders and hunt for the app you want to remove. If you find files with the app name you can send them to the Trash.

So, when uninstalling any software, you have to go over each of these folders one by one and remove the following:

  • Binary and dock icons are located in /Applications/
  • Application support files are located in ~/Library/Application
  • Support Caches can be found in /Library/Caches/ and
    ~/Library/Caches
  • Plugins are located in ~/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/
  • Library can be found in ~/Library/
  • App preferences are located in ~/Library/Preferences/
  • Crashes are found in
    ~/Library/Application Support/CrashReporter/
  • App saved states are located in
    ~/Library/Saved Application State/

There are many more hidden files, some of which cannot be accessed by the user. And macOS/OS X will prevent you from deleting some app files.

As you can see, it's not that easy to uninstall applications Mac doesn't need, even when you know what to do. By the way, be sure to look for the name of the app in the file names of the files you remove. Don’t remove anything you don’t know! Do your due diligence before removing something from your system.

When you delete software on Mac manually, be sure only to remove an app file or folder when you’re sure of what it is. Look at the name very carefully before you nuke it. Removing the wrong files could cause problems with your system.

Remember, please be careful when deleting system files — you never know how it will affect your Mac if you remove the wrong ones (or the right ones for that matter!).

2. How to delete apps on Mac using Launchpad

How to uninstall on Mac is using the Launchpad? It's easy and this manual method works like this:

  1. Click Launchpad icon in your Mac's Dock.
  2. Find the app you want to delete.
  3. Click and hold the app until it starts shaking.
  4. Click X in the top-left corner of the app icon.
  5. Click Delete.

This will uninstall the app from your Mac. However, keep in mind that after removing the program, you should also delete its leftovers as we've described above.

Can't uninstall software on Mac?

Unfortunately, manual methods won’t get everything. Some apps are pre-installed macOS components and protected by the system while others will refuse to delete because they are already open (even though that’s often not true).

So, how to delete the apps on Mac that won't delete? You can try the manual removal after force quitting the app in question (press Command-Option-Esc and if the app is on the list shut it down) or rebooting your Mac.

This means that during an import, Photos copies all photos into it's own internal library bundle and manages where they are stored within that bundle. This is the default. How to find system library on mac yosemite 2017.

If you're still unable to delete apps on Mac or if you’re worried you won't do it correctly and want a safer alternative, there’s the easy method of uninstalling apps from your Mac so you don't have to force delete applications. It actually does a better (and safer) job and in a fraction of the time. Read on to learn how.

3. Uninstall apps with CleanMyMac X

When I referred to the easy method of uninstalling apps, I meant using CleanMyMac X. As for me, deleting apps is a pretty tiresome task. I’ve always put away this chore, as it will waste a huge amount of my time. But, my Mac was running low on free storage, so I decided to try CleanMyMac X to fix this problem. I used the Uninstaller module to get rid of multiple apps at once. Here’s what you need to do:

  1. Download CleanMyMac X, install and launch it (it takes less than a minute).
  2. Go to Uninstaller.
  3. Choose All Applications.
  4. Check the boxes next to the app you want to remove.
  5. Press Uninstall.

As you can see, CleanMyMac X shows precisely how much place each app takes, so it’s easier to detect the heaviest programs.

Is it possible to delete system files on Mac?

CleanMyMac X doesn’t let you delete system apps like Safari. Neither of Mac cleaners can do that. But, CleanMyMac X allows you to delete the data associated with system apps and reset them completely. Click CleanMyMac X’s menu in the upper-left corner and choose Preferences. Go to Ignore List and click Uninstaller. Here uncheck the box next to “Ignore system applications.”

Now, you can close Preferences and go back to Uninstaller. Click ► next to the app's icon to show its files. Then check the data you want to delete and choose Reset from the drop-down list next to app’s icon. Then press Remove.

It will help to clear some space on your Mac. Note that your app logs may also disappear after the reset.

4. Use the native uninstaller

Many applications are designed to clean after themselves. They come with a built-in uninstaller — a self-destroying utility bundled with a main app. This is mostly true for third-party apps that you download from the internet. That’s why native uninstallers remain more of a Windows thing, not much heard of in the Mac world.
The original uninstallers can be found in Finder > Applications. If your app looks like a folder (within the Applications folder) most likely it will have a separate uninstaller. The name will read [Your app] Uninstaller or Uninstall [Your App].

Open the folder, find the launcher and just follow the onscreen instructions. After the removal is complete, you can enjoy your extra storage space!

Clear app leftovers: preferences files and caches

No sane developer wants people to delete their application. As your desperate ex, they would do everything to stay on your Mac, like planting pieces of their software around your Mac so one day they can return. Support files, preference files, and caches — all these will likely remain even if you’ve deleted the app itself.
Here I’ll show you how to root out these remaining traces. I’ll use the Telegram app as an example.

Delete application support files

Click on Finder > Go to Folder… (in the upper menu).
Paste in: ~/Library/Application Support/Your App Name

In my case its: ~/Library/Application Support/Telegram

Now, delete the content of this folder.

Delete application Preferences

The Preferences folder contains your user settings. These files are tiny but there’s no reason not delete them, just out of principle.
Click on Finder > Go to Folder…
Paste in: ~/Library/Preferences/

Open the folder. Now type the name of your app in the search bar. Click to search 'Preferences.” Delete the found items.

Delete the caches

In the same vein, you’ll have to delete the remaining app caches.
This time, use the following command to paste in Finder > Go to Folder..
Paste this: ~/Library/Caches/Your App Name

Note: In some cases you need to search for the app developer's name, rather than the name of the app.

Delete leftovers with CleanMyMac X

If you’ve been doing a 'spring cleaning' in your Applications folder, chances are some files are still left somewhere in your Mac’s system. CleanMyMac X detects and collects them into the Leftovers tab.

Go to Uninstaller once again and select Leftovers. Select all the remaining files and press Uninstall to say goodbye to the app remains.

How to delete hidden apps

So you now know how to delete programs on Mac. But how to uninstall on Mac your hidden apps and extensions that can be hard to find, let alone remove? Well, we’ve got you covered.

Below we have easy to follow methods for removing Java, Flash, and other stubborn processes and extensions.

How to uninstall Java on Mac

Once upon a time, Java was an important component. But now it’s just unnecessary and a security risk that’s not worth taking. Apple agrees, which is why it stopped supporting Java in macOS. If you have Java on your system and want it removed, once again there’s a hands-on manual way and an automatic easy way.

The manual way to remove Java from Mac:

  • Open Utilities and launch Terminal

  • Paste in the following code:
    sudo rm -fr /Library/Internet <strong>Plug-Ins</strong>/JavaAppletPlugin.<strong>plugin</strong>. sudo rm -fr /Library/PreferencePanes/JavaControlPanel.prefPane.

  • Enter your password

Congrats, you completely removed Java off your Mac!

How to uninstall Flash Player and other extensions

Adobe Flash Player is an extension that, like Java, has become infamous for security and privacy problems. Steve Jobs even called the extension “buggy,” and blamed it for a range of issues.

To remove Flash manually you can download the uninstaller from Adobe, but the process of finding the right version and the steps needed to do a proper removal of Flash is tiresome. Head over to get the full set of Adobe's Flash removal instructions.

Alternatively, you could just use the free edition of CleanMyMac X.

The easy way to uninstall Flash on Mac is to:

Remove Folders From Old Apps From Library Mac To Computer

  1. Open CleanMyMac X.

  2. Click on Extensions > Preference Panes.

  3. Select Flash Player from the list.

  4. Click Remove at the bottom.

Remove Folders From Old Apps From Library Machine


Now you are just as good at uninstalling applications on Mac as any Apple engineer. Hopefully, you now have plenty of free space. Don't miss a few related articles below.

How To Open Applications Folder On Mac

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