Deleting pre-installed apps to free up memory on Mac

OP wrote " Deleting pre-installed apps to free up memory on Mac "

Not possible

The macOS operating system and any Pre-Installed Applications resides in a sealed and read-only volume that can’t be opened by users or third-party applications.

You can delete Pages, Numbers, Keynote, GarageBand and iMoves but everything else - No

Memory is often confused with Drive Capacity

Memory is Random Access Memory ( RAM )

The two are very different and perform different functions

Remember, you own the computer

We Lease the Opening System from Apple

You can not delete pre-installed macOS App's.

If your iMac is running low on free storage space..?

see > Free up storage space on Mac - Apple Support

Old Toad wrote:

The following apps are installed on a read only volume and cannot be deleted:

…

There is not one on that list that one can delete from a Mac. 

They are all stored on a Read Only volume.  No write access, and deleting is a write activity to the Folder they are in, and the metadata that tracks the file.   

On my Mac, the only two on that list that take up more than 100 MB of space – not counting associated media libraries – are Books and Music. The rest of them appear to take up approximately 1 GB of space (combined). (This isn't exact – I was doing a running total in my head, and may have included a couple of small third-party applications in the total by mistake.)

So basically not worth micromanaging in these days when 256 GB is a small drive and 512 GB - 1 TB is a more reasonable choice for a new machine.

The following apps are installed on a read only volume and cannot be deleted:

•  Apple Books

•  Apple TV

•  Calculator

•  Calendar

•  Clock

•  Compass

•  Contacts

•  FaceTime

•  Files

•  Find My

•  Health

•  Home

•  iTunes Store

•  Mail

•  Maps

•  Measure

•  Music

•  News 

•  Notes

•  Podcasts

•  Reminders

•  Shortcuts

•  Stocks

•  Tips

•  Translate

•  TV 

•  Voice Memos

•  Wallet

•  Watch app

•  Weather

There is not one on that list that one can delete from a Mac. 

They are all stored on a Read Only volume.  No write access, and deleting is a write activity to the Folder they are in, and the metadata that tracks the file.   

I only see a few really large Apple applications on my Mac.

• Xcode (12.48 GB) – Optional download, not installed by default. (This is a default installation – depending upon what stuff you choose to install, an Xcode installation could be much larger.)
• iMovie (3.94 GB)
• Swift Playground (2.41 GB) – Optional download, not installed by default.
• GarageBand (1.6 GB)
• Keynote (757.3 MB)
• Pages (686.1 MB)
• Numbers (623.5 MB)
• Books (117.2 MB)
• Music (106.6 MB)

Looks like all of the ones that are larger than 120 MB are either completely optional, or are among the few that can be deleted. As for applications like TextEdit (2.4 MB), Calculator (4.5 MB), and Chess (11.2 MB), they're so small relative to modern drives as to be in the noise. Even if you could delete them, you wouldn't get much space back.

There is only ONE App whose deletion would free up more than a tiny amount of storage space, and that is Xcode.

(But most users never installed Xcode in the first place.)

If you are running out of storage space, you need to consider adding an external drive.

How much free space do you have on your iMac?

It's often recommended that one try to maintain a minimum of 80-100 GB of free space on a boot drive to facilitate optimal system and application performance.

One can always get an external SSD and move the contents of the Pictures, Music, Movies folders to folders on the EHD and run them from there.

If you go that route always check to make sure the Photos and Movies libraries work as expected on the EHD before you delete them from the boot drive. Also I recommend purchasing the EHD from OWC (MacSales.com) which is considered the premier 3rd party hardware provider for Macs.

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