Even though the programmer is no longer with us (tragic car accident in 2017), this is STILL the best uninstaller on the Mac platform. Works great in Big Sur.
super simple and effective way to get rid of apps along with their paraphernalia! I have been always only deleting an App, and many leave a trail of clutter behind. AppDelete gives me satisfaction by making sure that when I delete App X, no X-related stuff will be left behind in Library, Prefs etc, apart of course from files I created and saved.
Might be the App I have used more than any other over time. Unbelievable functionality! Sadly, though it still works, it performs at a snail's pace. The problem……Catalina!!! Works fine in Mojave. Given the date this was last updated, it seems like my favorite App has been abandoned by the developer. I certainly would like to know what it'd take to get the developer to update this. I'd be quite happy to pay at least twice the current price for a licenced copy.
This is the most sophiticated, well designed app uninstaller I have ever seen. I've tried many over the years and used AppDelete for the last 15 years. Unfortunately, the AppDelete developer passed away a couple of years ago and the app has not kept up with changes in the Apple OS. I was persuaded to try this app by the outstanding reviews. I'm impressed. Great interface, fast, clean process for deleting all files associated with an app.
Great App that actually deletes files and anything associated with them. I still wish it could remove some of the tougher programs but I understand that they are restricted some with apps requiring the user to uninstall through them.
My go to app for deletions. Does the best overall job in the least complicated way. Just came to check on the app because I needed a new copy after my computer is stolen...
It works great! And one of the best things for me: "AppDelete technology is also integrated into MacUpdate Desktop. This allows you to delete apps right from within MacUpdate Desktop by right-clicking on it and asking AppDelete to delete it."
This was just announced:
https://www.facebook.com/ReggieAshworthSoftware/posts/188229183848825
"Dear friends and customers of Reggie Ashworth. My name is Hans Tuchel, best friend of Reggie. I’m sad to inform you that Reggie passed away in a car accident last year. He left behind his common-law-wife and three kids.
I will keep the support running for his successful Apps, VidConvert and AppDelete. Please contact me here if you have any questions. I’m working on the next update for the App."
I've tried a couple of other deletion apps and wasn't all that satisfied. After purchasing AppDelete, I set about getting rid of all the open source software I'd downloaded in my attempts to find suitable substitutes for Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. The other apps I used still left various artifacts about, especially in my Library folders, where even angels fear to tread when it comes from deleting files. AppDelete seems to have scoured my system thoroughly and I recovered a substantial amount of hard drive space.
Last week I had to find out which was the best Mac uninstaller for me. I read many many reviews and looked here at MacUpdate. The contenders: iTrash, AppCleaner, AppDelete, App Uninstaller (App Cleaner & Unistaller from Mac App Store... same developer), CleanMyMac, AppZapper, MacClense, CleanApp, MacRemover, & Osx Uninstaller.
I could write a very long summary, but I think it best to just summarize my results. My testing methodology was simple. I chose 20 apps from quite a wide spectrum (Apple Apps, VPN's, games, Adobe products, photo editors, email programs, etc.) and then used each program to show me the related files that it found. I compared the results of my contenders. Very quickly, a "Top Tier" separated itself for the rest. They are: iTrash, AppDelete, App Uninstaller, and TrashMe. They consistently found more applicable files then the rest. Between these four, App Uninstaller and TrashMe took it by a nose at the finish line. Whats more, I preferred their UI quite a bit more than the other two, but obviously this is personal preference. I think any of these four should definitely be on your short list if you are looking for a Mac uninstaller. Just a couple more random thoughts: unless another developer takes over for Reggie (RIP), I would suspect updates to AppDelete are no more; MacRemover & Osx Uninstaller look to be from the same develper but definitely not worth $30; I chose App Unistaller over its Mac App Store version due to not being sandboxed, but also picked up TrashMe. TrashMe really surprised me. It sort of came out of nowhere but really proved itself over and over.
Hope this helps some of you.
Obviousl, YMMV.
Cheers!
Appdelete doesn't work right running macOS10.13.4 latest beta. It finds less related files in the macOS temporal folders. I tried to contact the developer a week ago but got no reply yet.
Anyone else having this problem too?
Very sad that Reggie passed away. :-(
This is the best uninstaller I've found (comparing with CleanApp, AppZapper, iTrash, etc.), it's the one that finds more files to delete — in the second position arrives iTrash.
I installed an app named Monit that adds a widget to Notification Center. After 30 seconds I no longer wanted it so I quit the app and dragged it into AppDelete.
36 items were found. They all have "monit" in their names, but 23 are unrelated.
Things like Activity Monitor app.com.apple.activitymonitor.playlist com.apple.activitymonitor.sfl A user folder with the word monitor in the name etc.
TrashMe found 29 files - 17 unrelated.
iTrash found 19 files - 8 unrelated.
It’s odd that all three apps made the same mistake of including items simply because the names matched, rather than because they were associated with the app being removed.
Gotta say that this app still has some serious issues!
I just ran a "Genius" search again, and it failed miserably. It’s supposed to show apps that haven’t been used in 6 months or more. But many are running RIGHT NOW!
Some have launch daemons which load at boot, some are running in the background, and some are currently active in the menu bar. Many others have been used within the past week.
And the "Cancel" button STILL doesn’t work like it should. I dragged an app into the window and hit the Delete button. I was asked for my password but decided to cancel so I could compare removal using another app. I hit "Cancel" but the items were deleted anyway - just like before when I complained about it. CANCEL MEANS CANCEL!!! It doesn’t mean GO AHEAD!
I just ran a comparison with iTrash by dragging some apps into both and counting the numbers of found files. AppDelete found more every time except when they tied.
But AppDelete’s Genius feature is still dumb as hell.
Can’t comment on the Orphans feature - it found none which was surprising considering the large number of apps I’ve installed and uninstalled. So maybe I’ve done a good job of removing them, or maybe AppDelete missed some files, I don’t know.
I have had this app on all my mac-hines for at lest 5 yrs. it's so seamless. I've only had one issue ever. When it wouldn't work due to a glitch on my laptop. I contacted the developer.. Mr. Ashworth was super helpful in making it work. His assistance w/ time, knowledge and effort is more than what I expected. Awesome person!
The app itself is my go to app for what it's supposed to do.
Aha, the sweet question ‘Do you need an uninstaller’ for OSX? :)
In my quest to find out if this is the case I used 3 popular apps for a couple of weeks: Appdelete, iTrash and Appcleaner.
Whenever I removed an application, mostly after testing the application, I ran the above mentioned uninstallers. Noteworthy, I did not used iTrash background feature named Ghost mode and always manually dragged the apps into the uninstallers.
After approx. one month I can already answer the main question: Yes, it is useful to have an uninstaller for OSX. To my surprise it found many files and sometimes huge folders with large amount of data. They are harmless but do take a bite on your storage size. Some apps also scatter launchagents and launchdemons. Removing those can have an effect on boot times.
Now which tool is the best? I would say both Appdelete and iTrash did found equally amount of files. In some case iTrash did found more effectively related files and when switching to the expert mode it rarely found even more related files. But this mode needs to be used with caution.
It was a surprise that the very popular Appcleaner always, yes always, found less files. On top, Appcleaner never found the related launchagents and launchdemons files. It is free though.
Should you use an uninstaller? Well, if you don’t mind losing MBs or GBs of storage and don’t mind having unnessasary launchagents and launchdemons files, you don’t.
If you want to maintain a clean system, you definitely need such tool. In that case I recommend trying out Appdelete or iTrash. They both offer a free trial period.
The next sweet question: Why-o-why doesn’t Apple provides us such tool by default? :)
Just a note to say that the below mentioned issue with the Barsroom app has been addressed with an improved search algorithm for special cases such as this one. If anyone has any questions please get in touch with me via my site and I'm happy to answer them. Thanks!
I just tested 4.2.6 and the issues I've reported multiple times have NOT been fixed. When trying to remove Barsoom, it says there are 337 items to remove. And Barsoom has never been opened, only placed in the Applications folder. AppDelete SHOULD only show ONE item to remove!
Again it includes all my widgets, a bunch of _CodeSignature folders, all the .CFUserTextEncoding files, some .localized and .localizations folders, a bunch of .dat.nosync files and lots of other files for unrelated apps.
And the window STILL CAN'T BE STRETCHED HORIZONTALLY!
This app has not yet been updated to protect against the Sparkle updater framework vulnerability that was discovered in Jan. 2016.
Apps that use a vulnerable version of Sparkle and an unencrypted HTTP channel for server updates are at risk of being hijacked to transmit malicious code to end users.
The issues I reported months ago are still present.
1. The window can NOT be stretched longer, so only 9 files can be viewed at a time. This makes it unnecessarily difficult to view all the files listed.
2. I just used EasyFind to make sure there were no traces of Barsoom on my computer. I downloaded v2.04 from MU and installed it in my Apps folder. I DID NOT OPEN IT. Then I dragged it into AppDelete and AD says there are 323 files to remove!
I have only seen this extend of incorrect files listed for the one app I mentioned - Barsoom. Therefore I suggest the dev. duplicates my steps in an effort to diagnose the issue.
Until improvements are made, I only give it 2.5 stars, because it could do a LOT of damage if users let it indiscriminately remove everything it wants to.
This app has a good reputation (and I'm one of the users who've given it a positive review before) so now, in the interests of clarity, I want to point out that the new FipLab app called App Delete, available from the Apple Store with just two user reviews (at the time of this post) doesn't seem to be the one recommended here. It confused me and it might confuse you too!
Excellent app, I use it together with iTrash whenever I remove an app and it's really remarkable to see that one of them always finds more files/folders to remove than the other (no clear winner here, it differs per app).
In my review for version 4.2.2, I explained how I utilize AppDelete and then use a small application by Thomas Templeton to search for remnants that AppDelete may have missed (see my review and discussion). Several Versions of AppDelete have come and gone and I have continued to contact Reggie Ashworth, the developer reporting to him which paths to remnants have not been removed by AppDelete. Reggie is a perfectionist and he immediately check into the information I send him and if it is totally safe to incorporate my findings from FindAnyFile into the AppDelete algorithm, he does it pronto! Hence, he has just put out Version 4.2.5 and many more typical help files and other remnants show up in the search for files to remove than previously. Unlike iTrash which gives many false positives (calling this thoroughness) and where one needs to constantly be on the alert that one doesn't delete a needed file from some other application, Reggie's additions to his algorithm for AppDelete are safe. Few App Uninstallers bother to go where AppDelete goes. That is why I trust AppDelete. I notice that there are some complaints about the Genius function. My experience with Reggie Ashworth is that he is no slacker and if he is made aware of a bug as he has been in the reviews below, you can be assured that he will not rest until the problem is solved. Conscientiousness is Reggie's middle name.
I've left reviews for similar apps and said that AppDelete did a better job of removal than the ones I compared it to.
But I just used its Genius function and it's retarded, not genius!
It's supposed to find apps that haven't been used in 6 months but many of the items listed have been used in the past couple days, and many others launch on reboot and are running right now. I reboot my computer almost daily so there's NO reason these apps should be marked as not having been used for 6 months! It was rebooted a few times today because I installed the OS X 10.11.3 update. Four of the apps listed are currently running.
AppDelete Version 4.2.2 is one of the two best uninstaller apps around and it has to do with its search algorithm. There is a small app called FindAnyFile by Thomas Templeton where the user puts into its search field the unique name of an app or its developer and FindAnyFile can find virtually all files associated with an installed app. I used FindAnyFile and discovered some folders where developers of other uninstaller apps don't go. I emailed Reggie Ashworth as I am a dedicated user of his apps and told him where typically app developers put files that other uninstaller apps never search based on my use of FindAnyFile. Reggie is so responsive that he worked hard to put a whole list of those hard to find places in his algorithm for AppDelete. When all is said and done, Reggie's AppDelete goes where 99.9% of uninstaller apps never go and does it safely without danger to other apps or the operating system. That is why AppDelete is the best along with so many other features that its has! It truly deletes virtually every trace of an unwanted app from the hard drive.
wanted to leave a comment for Reggie and just say great app, as a beta tester of 10.11 I have had no problems with the app continuing to work as expected.
What sold me on this great app was the ability to search for apps to uninstall based on various parameters including the name, creation date and last used date.
I hope the developers will add the ability to sort each of those parameters in ascending or descending fashion. That is the only feature that I find missing!
I preferred the old design, the new logo make the App looks cheap. Nevertheless, the Application is great, if only I could get the old logo on this version, it'd be great!
