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.
The application or program can probably be found in your Applications folder. Open Finder and click on the Applications folder located on the sidebar. Once there, locate the program or application you wish to delete, and drag it to the trash bin located on the far right of the task bar. In this article, we will show you few simple tricks to remove unwanted apps or softwares that won't delete on Mac. How to Delete Apps in the Finder Manually (Hard Way) Part 2: Completely Remove Unwanted Apps that Won't Delete on Mac (Easy Way) Part 3: Delete Apps Downloaded from Mac App Store Part 1.
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).
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.
OS X Utilities
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.
When you download some unwanted apps from Mac App Store by mistakes, or want to free up more storage on your Mac, it is very necessary for you to learn how to delete an app on Mac.
Although it's quite easy to uninstall apps on Mac, some new Mac users still don't know the detailed solution. Therefore, in this article, we list 4 best methods for you to uninstall program on Mac.
You can simply delete the unwanted apps in manually way, or download a professional software to get the job done. Keep reading to get what you need.
Part 1: How to Delete an App on Mac from Launchpad
The first way we want to recommend to you is using Launchpadto uninstall programyou don’t want from your Mac. The process is very similar to that of deleting an app on your iPhone or iPad. It can be said the easiest way for Mac users to get rid of an app which is downloaded from Mac App Store. In what follows is the detailed steps of how to delete an app on Mac.
Step 1: Choose Launchpad from Dock or by pressing your keyboard on your Mac.
Step 2: Long press on any app icon until you see all the icons begin to jingle, release it.
Step 3: Now you will see a little X on the right corner of all the apps you can remove to trash.
Click the X on the app icon, which you want to delete and then choose Delete option when you see the pop-up window asking whether to uninstall app on Mac or not.
Part 2: How to Delete Apps on Mac with Finder
You can also solve the problem of how to delete apps on Mac with Finder. It also is a very easy way you can simply get in what follows.
Step 1: Launch Finder on your Mac by clicking on it simply from Mac Dock. Then you can choose Application folder in Finder.
Step 2: Now you need to find the app icon you want to delete and then right click on it.
Step 3: You can see Move to Trash option in the list. Just click on the icon.
Step 4: You need to empty the app you remove to trash just now permanently by opening your trash and right clicking to choose Empty. Here you can get 6 solutions to empty Trash on Macsecurely and permanently.
Part 3: How to Uninstall Apps from MacBook Pro with Dock
How To Delete Apps Apple
Except deleting apps on Mac from Launchpad and Finder, you can also solve the problem of how to uninstall program from MacBook Pro with Dock. If you are interested in how to delete apps on MacBook Pro, you can follow the next easy steps.
Step 1: Find the app you want to remove on your Doc. Or you can open the Applications folder on your Dock and find it there.
Step 2: Now you need to click and hold the app icon you want to delete, and then drag this app icon to the Trash icon which is also in your Dock, and release it.
How To Delete Old Apps Frmo Mac Os
Step 3: If you want to delete this app permanently and completely, click the Trash to open it, and then find the app icon you removed right now. Choose it by right click and then click Empty.
If you want to remove app from iPad, you can check hereto get full tips.
Part 4: Professional Way to Uninstall Applications on Mac
Here we also want to recommend the most professional way for you to help you solve how to delete apps on Mac. The software introduced in this way is called Mac Cleaner. It is one of the most professional Mac management tool which you can use to remove junk files, unneeded folders, large or old files and monitor your Mac performance.
It really is a safe and efficient which you can clear all your unwanted files, including delete applications for your Mac in a quickly but professional way. What’s more, it is able to monitor your Mac performance in multiple aspects, such as disk utilization, battery status, memory performance as well as CPU usage. If you are interested in how to delete applications on Mac, you can read the next steps.
Step 1: Download Mac Cleaner
First of all, download Mac Cleaner on your computer and finish the installation by dragging the icon to Application.
Step 2: Launch Mac Cleaner
Now launch this software on your Mac after you install the program successfully. Then it will detect your Mac OS system status automatically. You can find the program as the following screenshot.
Step 3: Choose uninstall app
In the main interface, you can see the key features from the left side of the window. Then choose Uninstaller to delete applications on MacBook Pro. It will take some time to scan all your apps on Mac by this software.
Step 4: Clean apps from Mac
After scanning, you can see all your apps downloaded on Mac. Find the software you want to delete and finish the process of how to remove apps from MacBook Pro. During this process, you can check and clean up various related files created by this app you want to remove. If you deleted some important files by mistake, you can check this post to recover deleted files on Mac.
Part 1: How to Delete an App on Mac from Launchpad
1. How do I remove an app from my Mac’s Dock?
How To Delete Old Apps From Mac
Just place the cursor over the icon of the icon of the Dock item you wish to remove, and then right-click the icon. A pop-up menu will appear. Select the Options > Remove from Dock item from the pop-up Dock menu.
2. How do I hide all icons on my Mac desktop?
Click on its icon in the menu bar and select “Hide Desktop Icons.” It will immediately hide all the icons available on your desktop.
3. Can I delete default apps on Mac?
It is prohibited to delete standard applications in a regular way. That’s because the removal of built-in applications may damage the viability of the system.
Conclusion
In this article, we introduce 4 best methods for you to solve how to delete an app on Mac. When you need to delete unwanted apps from Mac, you can choose one of the methods as you want to do such a job. If you think this article is helpful, just share it with your friends. Hope you can enjoy the information. Of course, you can also share more comments in the article if you have any other query about the methods to delete an app on your Mac.