[pfp]

No. The user data, preferences etc under ~/Library/ belong to you - whether it's 3 kB of preference toggles or 3 decades of email.

It would be "unbelievable" if a multibillion company decided to be helpful and erase your data just because you deleted the binary that created them (actually, it wouldn't, but let's not digress into how those companies are stripping away our agency by mobile-ossifying everything).

The whole Mac idea was that there's no "uninstall process" with opaque windoze registries etc; what the Finder shows you is simple enough for an average user to understand. Like dragging an "Application" or a CD-ROM into the Trash to get rid of it. Of course they ruined all that with ~/Library/{Preferences,Application Whatever,Kitchen Sink}/.

Turns out your UNIX with a human face ate its children afterall. With relish.

Also, "uninstallable" means "cannot be installed"

[nerdponx]

Consider that sometimes people do actually want to clean up all artifacts of an installation, and don't want to go digging around in a bunch of machine-generated directories trying to guess what to delete.

I think I agree that the default behavior should be to leave all that data on the user's system. But I also think that apps should have some kind of associated file manifest, which you can use to automatically clean up after the app, or at minimum get a definitive list that you can go through manually or with a script.

It turns out that Apple installer packages do include a manifest (cutely called a BOM) of package contents, but users don't typically keep package installers around after completing installation successfully, and it says nothing about files that may be written by the app itself while in use.

I don't see how you could possibly claim that the user library "ruined" anything. Most apps need to save some kind of settings and/or transient data files. Where else would they go?

[throwaway290]

> sometimes people do actually want to clean up

There are two scenarios I want the cleanup to happen: 1) app is buggy and I'm trying to fix it by reinstalling from scratch, 2) I need to free disk space. Both are pretty rare, and in the second case I am already using a specialized utility like DaisyDisk to see where my space has gone.

> transient data files

/tmp? That gets actually auto cleaned up!

> settings

Maybe. Do we want macOS to introduce the concept of uninstall to shave a few of those kilobytes? Hoping programmers do not screw up with rm -rf /? I already hate it when I have to use an installer so that's a no from me.

[Dalewyn]

>opaque windoze registries etc

Thanks for demonstrating your lack of credibility.

Uninstallers by and large only do the reverse of what an installer did by going through the install log and undoing what it did.

This means any additional files made after the the installation that weren't properly appended to the log, any additional information added to the Registry that weren't properly appended to the log, and any user files created after installation (eg: save files) will not be touched by the uninstaller.

Should everything be properly logged for clean uninstalling? Yes; Linux package managers are a decent example. But reality is not ideal, so we have to deal with practicality. This presumably is the case whether it's Windows, Mac, or Linux.

[Aloha]

Most windows installers do not bother to clean up /Program Data or ~/AppData

Nor do most linux programs remove dot files when they go away.

[Kwpolska]

> The whole Mac idea was that there's no "uninstall process" with opaque windoze registries etc; what the Finder shows you is simple enough for an average user to understand. Like dragging an "Application" or a CD-ROM into the Trash to get rid of it. Of course they ruined all that with ~/Library/{Preferences,Application Whatever,Kitchen Sink}/.

The Windows registry is a simple key-value store, just like the macOS defaults system. Windows installers/uninstallers may create/remove some registry entries, but those are typically entries for file associations and the installed program list, and perhaps some global settings. But then the app is free to write its configuration data to any registry key it likes (usually ones named after the app), or to files in ~\AppData, or perhaps C:\ProgramData. It’s not much different to macOS in that regard. The uninstaller may offer to remove the stuff in AppData, or it might keep it as-is.

(~\AppData is a bit less messy than ~/Library, because there are only three folders in AppData where application folders could go, but Library has all these folders with various meanings.)

[dm33tri]

I think on macOS programs are able to store data "inside" themselves, because .app files are just folders. They usually shouldn't put stuff in Library.

[plq]

> Also, "uninstallable" means "cannot be installed"

Nope. In writing, it's technically ambiguous -- it could mean both "can't be installed" or "can't be uninstalled" but to me it means "can't be uninstalled". In spoken language, it depends how you stress the first syllable and both could be used, I guess.

That's why if you want to denote the installability of something, you should use the nonambiguous installable-noninstallable pair and leave the word "uninstallable" for the "can't be uninstalled" meaning. AFAICT, whether you should spell it as "non-installable" or "noninstallable" (note the hyphen) is up to you.

Again, in my personal experience, uninstallable definitely means 2 in [1]: "uninstall-able". Pretty sure I never saw that word used as "un-installable".

[1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/uninstallable

[swashbuck1r]

The ambiguous uninstallable meanings would be:

* cannot be installed

* can be uninstalled

The Wikipedia link you posted agrees with that interpretation.

I think “can’t be uninstalled” would be “non-uninstallable”.

[Nevermark]

You could use “uninstall-able”.

This makes it clear (or at least clearer) that “able” is the modifying suffix to the root concept “uninstall”.

[leonidasv]

When I delete an app on an iPhone, all its data is also deleted. Gone. Why can't it be the same for the Mac?

That's what the average end-user understands by removing an app from the system nowadays.

[dmitriid]

> When I delete an app on an iPhone, all its data is also deleted. Gone. Why can't it be the same for the Mac?

Because on iPhone the app is completely sandboxed. Think Docker, with virtualised OS paths, but on OS level. When Apple tried to introduce a very light version of sandboxing, the world was ablaze in pitchforks and torches.

[inferiorhuman]

  When I delete an app on an iPhone, all its data is also deleted. Gone.

Nope. Delete your Google apps. Reinstall one. It'll still pick up the accounts you used prior. Well, it used to anyways. It's not an iCloud keychain thing (or it wasn't).

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/441112/how-can-i-r...

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/332574/deleting-an...

[fingerlocks]

There is an exception on iOS as well. Apps can register write access to a custom location on iCloud that will persist after the app has been deleted. You can see all the leftovers in Files.app

[plonk]

iOS apps usually store all user data in the cloud, so you can delete their data without much risk.

[eviks]

The helpful part would be for the huge company to give users visibility and an easy choice, not your simple "delete everything" strawman The data doesn't "belong to me", that entirely depends on the specific app/type of data (and this concept of a few kbs of very important stuff I've carefully changed in the app's settings menu and would even like to track in vcs vs all the other junk is also largely missing, though that's also on the app devs)

[nihilius]

In Ubuntu i can do apt remove to just uninstall the binary or i can apt purge to remove config files as well. Is there an native macOS equivalent for this?

[qalmakka]

The package manager will never attempt to clear stuff under user's home directories, just like macOS will not clear stuff under ~/Library. The package manager doesn't and cannot know what content an application has created while in use. Only the application itself knows that.

[ThePowerOfFuet]

> Also, "uninstallable" means "cannot be installed"

It means both cannot be installed and can be uninstalled, depending on context.

[eyko]

At least provide a user friendly way to manage it. For instance, offer the option to either delete, backup, or leave in place when uninstalling. For things left in place, have a GUI to view and manage them.