Left over app deletions

1) That is a record of your installations. You don't want to ever delete that. I understand that sometime people want to purge any and all evidence of a particular software installation. But that is an exceptionally bad idea.

2) Never, ever use any kind of "app zapper" or "clean up" tool. Some of the files that 3rd party apps install cannot be removed by those app zappers. Furthermore, if you even attempt to do so, you will literally burn those old parts into the operating system to the point where they cannot be removed by any reasonable means. At that point, you will either have to erase the hard drive or resort to back alleys of the internet for instructions that are too complicated and dangerous for us to post in this forum.

3) I'm not kidding

You can check to see if you've removed all of the supporting files for an app by downloading and running the shareware app Find Any File to search for any files with the application's or the developer's name in the file name. 

Any files that are found can be dragged from the search results window to the Desktop or Trash bin in the Dock for deletion.

FAF can search areas that Spotlight can't like invisible folders, system folders and packages.  

If you get warnings that the file can't be deleted because it is in use or used by another app boot into Safe Mode according to How to use safe mode on your Mac and delete from there.

Note:  if you have a wireless keyboard with rechargeable batteries connect it with its charging cable before booting into Safe Mode.  This makes it act as a wired keyboard as will assure a successful boot into Safe Mode.

JohnZiebart wrote:

Am I to understand that this is just a “record” of my installs

Yes

the actual leftovers of the deleted apps that I painstakingly manually removed in the Library are actually non existant and that’s why I can’t find any trace of them in the Library other than in this ”record” of them?They only exist on this “record “ and not in the Library?

I understand what you are asking, but I cannot give you the confirmation you seek. What you are asking is simply impossible.

Here is how this works....

If you install apps from the Mac App Store, Apple imposes certain technical restrictions. One of those restrictions is that apps may not, without user assistance, create files or folders outside of their "Container". If you were to go into the user library folder and delete an app's container, then all files created by that app would be gone. Maybe. 😄

If you install apps that are not distributed from the Mac App Store, all bets are off. If you provide your password during installation or usage of said apps, then all bets are off. Didn't I already say that? Well, let's just say you're deep in the hole now.

As complicated as this may sound, rest assured it is even more complicated. A Mac App Store app can have multiple containers. For other apps, there is absolutely nothing that ties a given file to the app that installed it. In most cases, developers make an effort to keep these things together, but not always. And sometimes, in the case of licenses and trial versions, they make an effort to obfuscate things.

But way, there's more. 😄 In many cases, the files that you do find that appear linked to a given app weren't actually created by that app. Each app (or app-like thingy) has a (not very) unique identifier called a "bundle ID". Whenever the operating system creates files or folders on behalf of 3rd party software, it will (usually) include the bundle ID as part of the file or directory name. But this doesn't mean that the app was negligent about cleaning anything up. Apps should never delete files they didn't create. You could argue that Apple should clean up these files, but good luck arguing with Apple.

Many of these files are sort of like your appendix. Do you absolutely need your appendix? No. Is there a non-zero chance it will cause problems at some future date? Yes. Is it worth rummaging around in your own abdomen with a scalpel to try to get rid of it? Almost certainly not.

JohnZiebart wrote:

"cleaned" lightroom app leftovers that I missed that FAF found and lightroom is still showing in the "installed software" log,I guess that will not change ,correct?

Correct.