I'd like to recover some HD space by unmounting and deleting downloaded .dmg files after installing them. Does unmounting and deleting the .dmg's (by erasing Trash) also uninstall the apps? i had to download again once to reinstall, so not sure if this is the normal behaviour or it depends on the app.
Thanks,
MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.1)
Hi Cfogacad,
you dug up a 6 year old thread. You are lucky anyone responded. Click on the application in the Dock, it will reveal a popup menu. From there it offers you the chance to show in Finder in the Options submenu.
Once you show in Finder, the application in question will be revealed in a Finder window that represents its actual location on the drive.
Command click the title of the Finder window to reveal the path of that folder. If it is in the Hard drive -> Applications you loaded from the Applications folder. If it is from the DMG, it will be from a folder whose icon is like an old floppy disc drive.
How can I make sure if a software is either running from Applications or directly from the .dmg file? I have for instance a 1.0GB Office .dmg which I would like to delete once I've run out space with my Mac? I open the Finder > Applications and cannot see any Office icon in there...
No. The dmg (disk image file) would have contained the installer package which you used to install the application.
Deleting the dmg will not delete the application, but it would be useful to keep it somewhere in case you ever need to reinstall.
No. DMGs are "disk images." Deleting them after the application they contain has been installed is roughly equivalent to ejecting the disk from your drive after installation.
Deleting the DMGs will not affect the apps after they're installed, though it's not a bad idea to make a backup of the DMGs before deleting them, in case you ever need to reinstall the app.
We have a concensus! đ
Except, I've seen some people open a Disk Image that has just the application in a folder, to be dragged to an Applications folder whom never do that, and run the application straight off the Disk Image. In event you are not launching it from your Applications folder, and are launching it from the DMG directly when the DMG is mounted, deleting the DMG will delete the application. Lastly holding onto the DMG is helpful for any software that you purchase/download online that doesn't come with its own DVD. The only time you'd want to delete it is if you clone backup your data including the applications in question.
Yeah, I guess we were typing at the same time. You won the race. Well done! đ
Thank you all. And sorry i didn't find similar question the day i asked it. What Brody described was exactly my recent experience: somehow after downloading the app open the .dmg and asked to be dragged into the App folder. Later when ejecting and deleting .dmg the app is also gone.
Tips about backup .dmg make sense. What i had in mind are the free apps that get updated often, so saving the .dmg is not critical in this case.
does deleting .dmg also uninstall app?
