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Comment by javagram | Hacker News Reader

> And Windows does?

Control Panel “add and remove programs” usually works?

There’s no equivalent on Mac. Yes, dragging the app to the trash is a thing but that leaves behind content in ~/Library/caches, ~/Library/Application Support, and ~/Library/Preferences . It’s been somewhat of an issue with Mac ever since they first put a hard drive on the original ones back in the 80s...

Edit: I literally cleared several GB of junk out of my application support folder left behind by just one app today, so it’s fresh on my mind. OmniDiskSweeper is great for finding this stuff.

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Control Panel “add and remove programs” usually works?

All that does is launch the app’s uninstall process. The app is free to leave whatever crap it wants to on your system.

OK but on Mac, dragging the app to the trash doesn’t launch an uninstall process, so it will always leave the crap behind.

Your app is suppose to be self contained....

Then what in the world is the huge Application Support folder for?

And why is it filled with stuff from Apple programs?

The point is, all of those files are generally still left behind on Windows as well. Uninstalling a program in Windows is roughly equivalent to dragging it into the trash in macOS.

> all of those files are generally still left behind on Windows as well.

Citation needed. That was the case in the 90s, these days most apps (device drivers aside) uninstall fairly cleanly with only settings/configurations stored in the registry still resident afterwards. Startup programs remaining after an uninstall is straight-up a bug.

> these days most apps (device drivers aside) uninstall fairly cleanly

Citation needed.

Windows installers are declarative and data-driven. An installer script does not simply use the file copy operations a usual app would use during runtime.

Instead an installer is driven by a number of "database" tables that specify the installer actions in a declarative way.

There are several benefits to this approach. The declarative actions are reversible and the uninstall actions can thus be inferred automatically. This removes the burden on install authors to create a script to reverse the install operations.

This includes registering services/daemons (will unregister on uninstall), registering protocol handlers, filetype/program associations, desktop shortcuts etc.

The declarative approach also allows the installer to roll back in case of an error during installation. This even includes "undeleting" files that were deleted. (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/msi/rollback-...)

The author of the install script can (non-Store installers) escape and execute a specific program during the install process. This is rarely needed, though. So the default is that the uninstaller will uninstall by completely reversing the install actions.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/msi/windows-i...

No, dragging an app from "Applications/" into Trash is equivalent to dragging a program folder from "Program Files\" into Recycle Bin. Actually that's exactly what it is.

Have you checked ProgramData, Local, and Roaming recently? Or your registry?

Also, Add/Remove only works if the program adds itself there. And remove only works if the program added an uninstaller. Also, even then, it still leaves crap behind.

At least there is a convention to have an uninstaller. If you create the installer through conventional toolboxes the uninstaller comes for free. That's how most Windows programs have both.

macOS has the same convention. Conventional toolboxes are mostly not-Windows and not-Microsoft toolboxes, indicating that even if it's a convention, it'a apparently not a windows-native convention.

Doesn't "Add and Remove Programs" just run whatever custom Uninstaller came bundled with the program? Is there anything it can do with programs that don't come with an uninstaller?

Yes: the annoying ones open up iexplorer.exe and ask you to fill out a survey of why you're uninstalling them.

"add and remove programs" is still relying on the application developer to get it right. I've seen plenty of apps leave behind crap.

> OmniDiskSweeper is great for finding this stuff.

iTrash [1] is also worth mentioning. It uses the Levenshtein distance algorithm [2] to find all of the junk related to an app.

[1] http://www.osxbytes.com

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance

I've been using AppCleaner [1] for years and it's awesome. And it's free.

https://freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/

That's a cool little app. But at some point, I became very wary of running free, closed-source binaries from the Internet.

What do you think about this one?

Why do they put that stuff in there instead of keeping it in the .app folder?

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