Users’ inability to delete the Apple News app is considered a current weakness in Mojave. While you can fully remove the app from iOS, you cannot do the same on this Mac operating system. Since there doesn’t seem to be a way to delete the app, you can tweak your Mac’s preferences to get some peace and quiet. Want to fully Uninstall any application on your Mac? It's not as simple as deleting the application in the application folder. There is an extra step that yo.

If you plan to sell your Mac to get a brand-new one or to give it away because you've already bought a newer model, you must first erase all your personal files to avoid unpleasant surprises afterwards.

There is a very simple procedure that you should follow if you need to remove all your personal data from your Mac, and it will require you to securely format your computer's hard drive or hard drives if it has more than one (as is the case of Mac Pros).

The apps you download and purchased from the App Store, you can also uninstall them through Launchpad. See how to do it: Click Launchpad on Dock. Click and hold the program you want to uninstall until the apps begin to jiggle. Click the x Delete button of the app you want to uninstall. Click Delete when prompted to confirm the uninstall. There are 2 ways to uninstall programs on Mac, the first method involves opening the Applications Folder, while the second method involves opening the Launchpad on your Mac. The first method, involving the Applications folder, allows you to uninstall any application regardless of where it was downloaded from. Re-check your Mac with Uninstaller function Anti-virus function of Combo Cleaner. – First, use Uninstaller tool to check if any unwanted apps are still in the Apps list. If there is unwanted apps in the list, please select them and click “Remove Selected Items”.

Apple also describes on their support website what one has to do before selling a Mac, and even though their procedure is quite simple to follow, it doesn't take into account the fact that a formatted hard drive will not prevent the buyer to recover files that you thought are lost forever.

This happens because even though you tell OS X to delete a file from the hard drive, the file will not be completely deleted since the operating system will only remove the memory reference to the file. This allows recovery software to scan hard drives and recover data, a quite helpful feat if you've accidentally deleted any of your files.

Fortunately, there is a way to protect your files from being revived when you part ways with your Mac: securely erasing the hard drive, a process that prevents third parties from recovering your personal data. When you are securely erasing the hard drive, you are telling the computer to overwrite your files with random data two to seven times (OS X supports 2-, 3- and 7-pass secure erasing).

Next, I will describe the entire procedure of completely clearing personal or sensitive data from your Mac, an easy-to-follow four-step procedure that should give you peace of mind once you give away your computer.

Step 1 - Backup

If you decide to securely erase your Mac's hard drive(s), you will first have to back up your information. To do this, you should use the Time Machine app because it makes it very easy to keep a copy of all your important data.

Apple has its own detailed tutorial on how to use Time Machine to back up your data, and you should follow it step by step to effortlessly set up Time Machine, as well as back up and restore your data.

It is important to note that you should always use an external hard drive, a Time Capsule or an OS X Server on your network to back up your data because backing it up on the same Mac means that you will lose all of it once you format the Mac's hard drive(s).

Step 2 - Deauthorize

During this step of the procedure, you will disconnect your Mac from all Apple services you have connected it to.

First of all, you have to deauthorize the Mac from iTunes to prevent it from accessing the content you bought on the iTunes Store, iBooks Store, Mac App Store or the iOS Store in the future.

Next, log out of iMessage by launching the Messages app, going to Preferences > Accounts and clicking on 'Sign out' after selecting your iMessage account.

Afterwards, you will have to sign out of iCloud by going to the  menu > System Preferences > iCloud. Here, uncheck Find My Mac and then click on the 'Sign Out' button at the bottom left side of the window. When you sign out of iCloud, all your iCloud data will be removed from your computer, but it will reappear on your new Mac once you sign in using your iCloud account.

Step 3 - Erase

The first thing you have to do is to restart your Mac and enter the Recovery system to format your Mac's hard drive(s).

You do this by going to the  menu and clicking the Restart option. Next, hold down and hold down ⌘ + R on your keyboard and release the keys once the Apple logo is displayed on the screen.

After OS X Recovery loads, you have to click on the Disk Utility entry at the bottom of the window. Then, you need to first choose the startup disk to delete your OS X installation, click on Erase tab at the top, select 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' as the partition format in the drop-down confirmation dialog that will appear, and then click on the 'Security Options' button.

Here you can choose the option to use when securely erasing the disk, from a 2-pass overwriting of your data, to a 7-pass US Department of Defense standard that will overwrite your data seven times. Needless to say, depending on the number of overwrites, the erasing processing will take longer.

Once you choose the secure erasing option, click OK and then on the 'Erase' button to completely delete all the files on the disk.

If your Mac has multiple hard drives with multiple partitions, you will have to repeat the procedure described above for each of the disks to avoid leaving any sensitive data on any of them.

Step 4 - Reinstall

After you've cleaned your Mac of all your personal files and data, all you have to do is to reinstall OS X by closing Disk Utility and clicking on the 'Reinstall OS X' option in the OS X Utilities window.

Reinstalling OS X is just a matter of following the on-screen directions, and you'll know you're done after the Welcome message appears.

At this stage, you can either configure the Mac and finish the setup process, or you can just power it off by pressing ⌘ + Q and leave it to the new owner to set up the Mac as he likes.

Leave a comment below if you need more information regarding any of the steps described above or if you want to share any other methods of quickly erasing all sensitive information from a Mac's hard drive with the rest of our readers.

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 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 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. Uninstall Mac apps 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 10.15 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
• 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. Uninstall Mac programs with Launchpad

Google How To Uninstall Programs On Mac

How to uninstall on Mac by 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 delete apps 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.

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 to delete apps on Mac automatically.

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 and uninstall programs on Mac with ease. 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. Another benefit is that you can bulk uninstall programs on Mac without dragging each app and its files to the Trash.

Is it possible to delete system files on Mac?

How To Uninstall Apps From Mac Mini Ipad

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 the 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 the 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!

How To Uninstall Software On A Mac

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 it's: ~/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 to 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

How To Uninstall Apps In Apple Ipad Mini

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 Default Apps On Mac

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.

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