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Completely Remove Leftover Files of Uninstalled App on Mac

Updated on Thursday, March 28, 2024

iBoysoft author Amanda Wong

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Amanda Wong
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Jessica Shee

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How to Remove Leftover Files After Uninstalling Apps on Mac?

Summary:  After you uninstall apps on the Mac, leftover files remain on your Mac. This post tells how to remove app leftovers on Mac, including manually deleting them or easily clearing them using third-party software such as iBoysoft DiskGeeker.

remove app leftover files on mac

For various reasons, you may need to uninstall apps on your Mac such as the app being unwanted, malfunctioned, Mac app icons crossed out due to incompatibility, etc. All but the system applications could be removed from your Mac in any way of the following :

  • Click the app icons in Launchpad to make it jiggle, then delete it.
  • Locate the App in Finder's Applications folder, right-click, and choose Move to Trash.
  • Directly drag-drop the app from Launchpad and Finder to Trash.
  • Uninstall an app with its built-in uninstaller.
  • Remove unwanted apps on Mac with third-party uninstallers for Mac such as iBoysoft MagicMenu.

Do you think that after uninstalling the app, the files created while using the app go away automatically? Not. These files are what we call service files, leftovers, remains, or remaining files, including cache files, preferences, error reports, logs, and all other data created by an application as support files. They remain on your Mac after the applications are uninstalled.

Worse, accumulated app leftover files may squeeze the disk space and slow the Mac performance. Therefore, you may want to know how to delete leftover files from uninstalled program Mac to free up disk space, speed up your Mac, and so forth.

Methods to remove leftover files after uninstalling apps on Mac:

Table of Contents:

If anyone around you faces the same app leftover files issue on Mac, share this post to help him/her!

 

Remove leftover files of uninstalled apps on Mac with a Mac cleaner

Manually deleting application leftovers is time-consuming and tedious. You should find the app-related files in those folders one by one, and every time you uninstall an app, you need to repeat these trivial steps. What's more, you should be very careful during the whole process to avoid deleting incorrect files by mistake.

That's where the third-party Mac cleaner comes in. iBoysoft DiskGeeker, an all-in-one disk management tool for Mac, provides a Clean Junk feature, which is designed to search for redundant data on the system drive, which is typically identified as Macintosh HD, Macintosh HD - Data, macOS, or macOS - Data. It can locate data and files that are no longer required in the system cache, user logs, application cache, downloads, etc.

Users can choose which files should be cleaned by looking at a list of files and folders with the file name, changed date, and size. Therefore, you can select all the leftover files of the deleted apps on your Mac and remove them together with one click.

Here's how to delete app data with iBoysoft DiskGeeker:

  1. Download, install, and open iBoysoft DiskGeeker on your Mac.
  2. Select your startup disk volume usually named Macintosh HD on the left sidebar.
  3. Click the Clean Junk button on the right toolbar.clean junk
  4. When the scanning completes, tick the boxes of the leftover files.
  5. Click the Clean button at the bottom and click OK.delete junk

In addition to cleaning junk files on Mac, iBoysoft DiskGeeker also enables you to read/write BitLocker encrypted and NTFS drives, check and diagnose disk errors, clone Mac hard drive, manage USB drives, flash drives, external hard drives, etc. It supports macOS Ventura and Apple Silicon Macs. Download this versatile software on your Mac to give it a shot!

If this post successfully helps you remove app leftover files on Mac, click the button below to share the methods!

 

Delete leftover files of uninstalled apps on Mac manually

When you add an application on your Mac, it creates a lot of support files to make it function well such as the preference files, crash reports, log files, caches, and so forth. These files are scattered around your Mac and are saved in different folders. After the uninstallation, they are still lying there. To manually delete app leftover files, you need first locate them in Finder, including both the Library folder and the Home folder.

Here's how to remove application leftover files on Mac:

  1. Open Finder on your Mac.
  2. On the top app menu, click Go and choose Go to Folder.go to folder menu mac
  3. Then go to the following folders, one at a time,  and press Return.
    ~/Library/Caches
    ~/Library/Logs
    ~/Library/Containers
    ~/Library/Application Support
    ~/Library/Cookies
    ~/Library/LaunchAgents/  delete app leftover files manually
  4. Check more leftover files of the deleted app in these folders:
    /Library/LaunchDaemons/
    /Library/LaunchAgents/
    /Library/Address Book Plug-Ins
    /Library/Application Support
    /Library/Application Support/CrashReporter
    /Library/Preferences
    /Library/Saved Application State
    /private/var/db/BootCaches
    /Library/StartupItems/
  5. Drag the associated files of the uninstalled app to Trash.
  6. Open the Trash, select all the deleted leftover files, and click Empty.
  7. Go to the Apple menu > System Settings > General > Login Items, and remove the items related to the apps you delete.

 Warning: You should not delete the whole folder which contains the support files of other applications, otherwise, it may result in other apps not running. For the unsure file, just leave it alone.

Have deleted app leftover files on your Mac by following the steps above, just share it with more people!

 

Bonus tip: removing leftover files while uninstalling the app

Whether deleting application data on your Mac manually or using a third-party Mac cleaner, you divide the process into two parts, uninstalling the app and removing its leftover files. Indeed, there is a more easy way to make it without extra effort to delete leftover files from uninstalled programs on Mac, that is using a third-party uninstaller.

Mac app uninstallers such as iBoysoft MagicMenu enable you to uninstall the app from the right-click menu and can automatically search and list all associated files of the uninstalled app so that you can simply select them all to delete, you just need to uninstall unwanted apps and remove its leftover files within several clicks.

A

No, it doesn't. When you delete the app on your Mac, the generated support files of the app such as the preference files, crash reports, log files, and caches still remain on your Mac, occupied the disk space.

A

To remove all app leftovers on your Mac, you can manually check those files in the Home and Library folders and delete them, or use the third-party Mac cleaner such as iBoysoft DiskGeeker to search for all junk files on your Mac and delete them with one click.

A

Perhaps the app can't be deleted on your Mac, it could be open or frozen, and you need to force quit the app via Activity Monitor and try to delete it again. Otherwise, you can try to uninstall apps with third-party uninstallers such as iBoysoft MagicMenu, delete the apps within their built-in uninstall options, or run the Terminal command "sudo rm -rf [appname].app/."

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