I can't seem to remove the Chess game I downloaded to my Macbook Pro. I've tried deleting it via Launchpad and by dragging the file from Finder to the trash. It won't move.
Why do you want to know what I care about?
Why do you want to know what I care about?
Thanks for your reply.
There is no error message, it just won't be deleted. If I try from the dashboard, it wiggles but remains in place after I drag it to the trash -- no "x" in the corner.
Your last paragraph was the reason I reached out. I have never encountered this situation before and thought I had opened my computer up to nefarious evildoers, despite the fact that I got it from the App Store.
I'm a graphic designer but not savvy about the inner workings of computers. This is a screenshot of the About section:
Yes, I downloaded it yesterday from the App Store, didn't like it and wanted to remove it. But there's nothing I can do to get rid of it! So it was not a preloaded game -- there were no preloaded games on my MacBook Pro 16" laptop as far as I know -- but it's acting like one now, which threw up red flags for me.
ebroihier wrote:
Why do you want to know what I care about?
Because that is an odd request. I thought you might have run out of disk space and were thinking (erroneously) that you could delete some apps to recover disk space. Or perhaps it was something else...
Which it was. So you cannot delete an app? Do you get some kind of error message? If so, what does it say?
For the record, there is one and only one way to delete an app on the Mac - ask the developer how to do it. Any other method could leave parts of the app installed, and possibly still running on your machine, forever.
Mac App Store apps are a special case because Apple has restricted them to a sandbox. The easiest way to delete a Mac App Store app is to click and hold the icon in LaunchPad. All app icons will start to shake. Any Mac App Store apps will get a little "x" button in the top left corner of the icon. Click that "x" button to uninstall the app. Any app icon that does NOT have a little "x" button in the top left corner is something else. In that case, you MUST contact the developer and ask pretty-please how you can remove it.
Remember, when you install an app from outside the Mac App Store, you give that developer (almost) full and total control over your computer and all of your data, and possibly in the cloud too. (Recent versions of macOS have somewhat restricted this access. Now, apps have to explicitly ask for access.)
That is wild! I've been using Macs for 30 years and never noticed that game before. Thanks for your help.
Thanks for marking my answer as the solution. When I came back - I noticed that I missed the chess game was downloaded, not the game that comes pre-loaded on Macs. If that is the case, the way to delete an app that you downloaded is to go to Finder > Applications > CTRL + Click (right click) > Move to trash.
You cannot delete chess as it is a built in component.
This is what I see in Finder:
It’s part of the operating system. You can’t remove it. Why do you care?
That is Apple's Chess app. It came with the operating system. You did not download it from the App Store. If you did download a Chess app from the App Store, then it is likely still installed.
how to delete Chess game
