Henry Malthus

Well, mostly.

Most apps for Mac OS X are simple application bundles (.app files). These are simple double-clickable folders essentially, containing everything necessary for the app to run. These applications are easy to uninstall — all you have to do is drag the .app file, usually in the /Applications folder, to the Trash.

The pain in the ass bit comes along when you find applications that aren’t simple app bundles. Many of such applications come installed with OS X: Garageband, iWeb, etc. Not only do they have the .app file (in the Applications folder), but they also install files to various locations oustide the Applications folder, “/Library/Application Support/Garageband” for Garageband being a prime example.

The really annoying thing about these applications? They don’t have uninstallers. So how do we go about uninstalling them then? Well, you’ve got two options really:

1. Use Spotlight. Search for “Garageband” and simply move any folders/files you find to the Trash. This option isn’t actually that bad, although you do, of course, run the risk of deleting files that weren’t actually installed with Garageband and potentially messing up other applications, or deleting files made by you that just happen to have the word ‘garageband’ in them.

2. Use AppZapper. This little app simplifies the process. Doing essentially the same thing as using Spotlight, although it (I assume) is a bit more careful about what things it can/should delete for you, while also allowing you to review files before you let it go ahead and delete them.

Now AppZapper is shareware, so it only allows you to “zap” five apps before it asks you to cough up some cash to purchase it. But, fortunately, it also has this “ZapGenie” feature, which scours your hard drive for installed apps allowing you to select multiple apps to delete at once, while happily only counting as one “zap” in the you-must-pay-us-soon counter.

So, uninstalling some apps on Mac OS X is a pain in the ass, but luckily there are a couple ways to ease the uninstalling process.

You still need more free space??

Yeah, me too.

A nice way of freeing up some more space is to remove all the languages you don’t use. I don’t know about you, but I personally use my computer in only one language.

Normally, removing all the translations would be a Herculean task, but thanks to Monolingual (maybe I should have named this post “How awesome are my pimping skills?”) it’s not too bad, provided you take care to read the Readme.

Monolingual is a small download, and allows you to select for removal things you’ll likely never need to use, but are taking up buckets of space regardless. Things like extra translations, keyboard layouts and input methods, and processor architectures.

Taking the safe route, I chose to remove all languages except the variations of English, and Arabic. While I chose to leave all the architectures, along with all the keyboard layouts and input methods intact: freeing up some 2.2GB of hard drive space – space that is likely to soon be filled with music and photos.

It’s sad that Apple has decided to change it’s Installer program so that it can no longer uninstall applications and languages, as it seemingly could back in OS 9, but, until this oversight is fixed, at least we have a number of other options available to us.