Wouldn't you love to rid of some or all files on your Mac forever. Be it for storage space or reselling it. Perhaps your Mac is too old to take the next operating system version, or you’ve stored a lot of data on it, and you’re worried that it could be hijacked if stolen.
How To Delete Mac Apps Completely
The last thing you want is to see that your data was leaked by some hacker, leaving you vulnerable and without a clue of what to do next.
Macs also have no way to uninstall or install operating system features, so there’s no way to easily remove the many applications Apple included with your Mac. On OS X 10.10 Yosemite and earlier, it was possible to open a terminal window and issue commands to delete these system apps, which are located in the /Applications folder. Click next to the app that you want to delete, then click Delete to confirm. The app is deleted immediately. Apps that don't show either didn't come from the App Store or are required by your Mac. To delete an app that didn't come from the App Store, use the Finder instead. Uninstalling applications downloaded from the Mac App Store is even easier — just delete the application from the Applications Folder and its accompanying folder in User Library Containers source: Tanous. To completely remove apps from Mac manually, you need to find all of the associated files that come along with the apps. So this means not just dragging the app icon to the Trash bin, but to search and find the depths of the system app files on your Mac and get them all out of your disk.
The good news is you can permanently delete files from your Mac using several methods that we’ll show you in this guide.
Can My Files Be Retrieved Once I Delete Them
The short answer is yes.
Data recovery technology has made it possible to recover files and restore them, which means someone else can retrieve any files you delete from a hard drive.
Most new Macs come with the solid state drives (flash storage) or Fusion Drives for some iMacs, instead of the old spinning hard disk drives. That is a critical factor when it comes to securely delete files on your Mac because you won’t have to do so if it comes with an SSD.
If you have an older Mac, it probably has a regular HDD, but the newer models with the SSDs allow you to use the standard method of moving files and emptying the trash to erase files, compared to securely erasing the files.
Unlike HDDs, where secure file deletion works, it doesn’t with the SSDs because overwriting a file only creates a new one in a new location but doesn’t overwrite the old file’s contents.
Thankfully though, there are different methods you can use to permanently delete files on your Mac, whether it has the old HDDs or the SSDs.
Note: You can check the storage on your Mac by clicking the Apple logo at the upper left side of the screen, and then going to About This Mac>Storage. Under the disk icon, you'll see whether your Mac has a spinning HDD or an SSD. Move Files to Trash
This is a tried and true method of deleting files on your Mac by dragging it to the trash. You can also use the Move to Trash feature by right-clicking the file and selecting the option. From here, you can go ahead and empty the trash.
Delete Immediately is a feature introduced by Apple with OS X (macOS) 10.11 El Capitan that bypasses the trash when you delete a file. It’s much faster than Move to Trash as you simply highlight your files and then use the Option-Command-Delete shortcut.
Alternatively, you can go to Finder’s File menu and hold down Option key to change the Move to Trash option to Delete Immediately. You’ll be asked to confirm the deletion, just as you would when using Move to Trash option.
If you want to skip the empty trash confirmation, go to your keyboard and press the shortcut Command-Option-Shift-Delete. That will bypass the dialog window to confirm the deletion and empty the trash instantly.
If that is too difficult for you to remember or cumbersome, change Finder preferences setting to kill the confirmation. Go to Menu>Preferences and uncheck the Show warning before emptying the Trash box under Advanced tab.
Secure Empty Trash
This is another simple solution to deleting your files permanently from your Mac. It ensures that the items are deleted forever by writing random data over them multiple times.
The feature came with Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. It overwrites data seven times to increase security.
To use this feature, click Finder menu and select Secure Empty Trash just below Empty Trash.
Use a Third-Party App
How To Uninstall App On Mac Completely
If deleting your files by emptying the trash doesn’t help, you can get a third party application to force the trash to empty. There are many such apps available like Permanent Eraser or Clean My Mac, which can help you empty your trash completely and permanently.
Use Mac Terminal
Mac’s Terminal is a command line tool that allows you to complete tedious tasks such as file deletion easily in just a few seconds. The program uses Unix commands to perform several functions easily and quickly without the operating system interfering with its processes. It’s efficient and powerful as it helps you remove files with ease, permanently.
However, if you haven't used the command line, Terminal can be dangerous too. Before getting into it, familiarize yourself with some basic Terminal commands, because any wrong command you enter can cause damage to your system, and you could easily delete files faster than you’d have time to stop the process.
The precision of every character, including capitalization and spaces, is important when using terminal commands.
To get started, take the steps below:
Step 1: Open Finder and click Applications>Utilities>Terminal.
Step 2: In the new window, a command prompt with the $ (dollar sign) will appear. The command line you’ll see is ComputerName:CurrentDirectory ~Username$ and the word Bash at the top, which is the Terminal language in a Mac.
Step 3: Type your command and press the Return key after each command to execute it, or copy and paste the command into the terminal window. Type rm and space, and then drag and drop the file(s) you want to get rid of permanently into the Terminal window. Press Enter to remove it forever.
Note: You can also enter the file’s path into Terminal if you want to remove the file even faster without using drag and drop.Easily Delete Files for Good
Before you delete the files, make sure you have a backup of your data in case something goes awry. Of course, we would recommend you to get familiar with Terminal for it can be extremely powerful in erasing files while the interface may suffer a glitch or would be slow. Clear app mac icloud.
Next up:Want to delete your iCloud storage from your Mac and iPhone? Our next article shows you all the steps you need to take to clear out your storage.
The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.Read NextHow to Delete iCloud Storage from iPhone and MacAlso See#file deletion #imac
Did You Know
Thunderbolt 3 is a data and video transfer protocol and is developed by Intel.
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LogMeIn is a software that gives users access to your PCs and Macs from another computer. The app can help you access your home and work computers remotely and control it as if you’re sitting right in front of it. You can also get to your computer files and edit them from another computer. Plus, the LogMeIn app lets you run any apps on your computer remotely.
LogMeIn is usually used for IT management, software collaboration, file transfers, IT training, and remote troubleshooting. All you need to do is download the software and install it on both computers. Just double-click on the installer and follow the onscreen instructions to install LogMeIn. Keep in mind that the app should be running on both computers for the user to access them.
However, if for some reason, you no longer want to have the LogMeIn app on your computer, make sure you uninstall it from your Mac completely. If the app poses risks to your personal data, you’re giving away the Mac to someone else, or you simply don’t need to use the app anymore, uninstalling the app is a must.
Unfortunately, uninstalling LogMeIn is not as easy as installing it. Dragging the application to the Trash is just the beginning. To completely remove the LogMeIn app, you need to delete all files associated with it and reset all settings. These processes can be confusing and time-consuming, so we made this guide for you. This should outline clearly the processes involved to manually uninstall LogMeIn on your Mac.
How to Completely Remove LogMeIn from macOS
If you think that the LogMeIn app is no longer needed and is just taking up space on your Mac or if you think that the app can be exploited to steal your data or distribute malware on your network, you don’t need to have second thoughts about uninstalling it from your computer.
But uninstalling the app is not enough to ensure that the app has been completely removed from your Mac. There is a huge difference between uninstalling and removing an app on macOS. When you drag the app to the Trash, that is equivalent to uninstalling. To totally remove an app from macOS, you need to delete all the files related to the program and all app’s processes are completely stopped.
To remove LogMeIn completely from your Mac, you need to look through all the different folders and drives to make sure that all files and processes associated with the LogMeIn app have been deleted. You need to be thorough when cleaning up these files because it is very easy to miss a file or two among hundreds of other system files.
For this purpose, we’ll show you different ways to uninstall the LogMeIn app on Mac and how to delete all related files.
Step 1: Uninstall the LogMeIn App From Your Mac.
There are two ways to uninstall the app from macOS. The first one is simply dragging the LogMeIn app icon to the Trash. That should uninstall the app from your system. This is actually the easiest way to uninstall any app on macOS. Follow these steps to do this:
- Quit the LogMeIn app if it is running. Click the LogMeIn menu and choose Quit from the dropdown. Or you can simply press Command + Q.
- Navigate to the Applications folder under Finder > Go > Applications.
- Look for LogMeIn Client and LogMeIn Control Panel, and then drag them to the Trash.
- Make sure to empty the Trash afterwards.
The other method of uninstalling the app requires accessing the LogMeIn Control Panel. To do this, follow the steps below:
- On the Finder toolbar on your desktop, navigate to Go > Applications.
- Double-click the LogMeIn Control Panel to display the LogMeIn toolkit.
- Click on the About tab, then choose Uninstall.
- Click the Yes button to start the uninstallation process.
- Rebooting your Mac is recommended, but not required.
Step 2: Stop All LogMeIn Processes.
Aside from uninstalling the app, you also need to stop all running LogMeIn tasks running in the background. Uninstalling the app does not necessarily stop these processes, so you need to do them manually. Looking for each task under Activity Monitor can be quite time-consuming and confusing. The best way to stop all these processes altogether is by using commands.
Follow the instructions below to completely stop all LogMeIn processes:
- Open Terminal under Finder > Go > Applications > Utilities.
- In the Terminal window, type in the following command: /Library/Application Support/LogMeIn/bin/LogMeIn.app/Contents/Helpers/logmeinserverctrl stop
- Press Enter.
- Type in these commands one by one, followed by Enter after each line:
- /bin/launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.logmein.logmeinserver.plist 2>/dev/null euid:0 uid:0
- /bin/launchctl bsexec 68 chroot -u 501 -g 20 / /bin/launchctl unload -S Aqua /Library/LaunchAgents/com.logmein.logmeingui.plist 2>&1 euid:0 uid:0
- /bin/launchctl bsexec 68 chroot -u 501 -g 20 / /bin/launchctl unload -S Aqua /Library/LaunchAgents/com.logmein.logmeinguiagent.plist 2>&1 euid:0 uid:0
- /bin/launchctl unload -S LoginWindow /Library/LaunchAgents/com.logmein.logmeinguiagentatlogin.plist 2>/dev/null euid:0 uid:0
Double check if there are any LogMeIn processes still running under Activity Monitor.
Step 3: Remove All LogMeIn Files.
After quitting all tasks and uninstalling the app, the last step would be to clean up your system of all leftover files related to the LogMeIn app. You need to scour every folder where the app might have stored some its files, then delete them completely.
Here are some of the folders where you might find components of the LogMeIn app on your Mac:
- ~/Library/Application Support/LogMeIn/
- ~/Library/Application Support/LogMeIn Client
- ~/Library/Application Support/LogMeIn/drivers/LogMeInSoundDriver.kext
- ~/System/Library/Extensions/LogMeInSoundDriver.kext
- ~/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.logmein.
- ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.logmein
- ~ /Library/Application Support/
- ~/Library/ Preferences/
- ~/Library/Caches/com.logmein.Toolkit
- ~/Library/Caches/com.logmein.ignition
- ~/Library/Preferences/com.logmein.Toolkit.plist
- ~/Library/Preferences/com.logmein.ignition.xml
- ~/Library/Preferences/com.logmein.ignition.plist
- ~/Library/Logs> LogMeIn Client
- ~/Library/Cookies/com.logmein.Toolkit.binarycookies
- ~/Library/Cookies/com.logmein.ignition.binarycookies
Just drag these files or folders to the Trash, and empty it afterwards. You can also use a Mac cleaning software to make sure that all these files are completely cleaned up.
Summary
Installing an app, such as LogMeIn, on macOS is a lot easier than uninstalling it. Aside from uninstalling the app, you also need to stop all running processes associated with it and manually delete all leftover files. Removing LogMeIn from your Mac is a lot of work, so you need to think carefully the next time you want to install another app on macOS.
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See more information about Outbyte and uninstall instructions. Please review EULA and Privacy Policy.