Deleting Pre Installed Mac Apps (Chess, etc.)

This won't help at all but I thought your post was valid and all the other comments were pretentious know it alls trying to make themselves feel cool. I have the same question just about different apps. Were you able to find a forum where people actually answered your question?

and all the other comments were pretentious know it alls trying to make themselves feel cool.

And who would those people be?

Were you able to find a forum where people actually answered your question?

I did answer the question, and pretty darn thoroughly.

Chess can be deleted without consequence, PhotoBooth I am not so sure about, it may have other involvements.

GarageBand (if you have it and don't need it) may also be deleted, and will reclaim more space than other apps.

Updates will still work.

That's about it, I generally do not recommend removing apps from Macs, but some at least are safe if you do.

I know this is an old post but I had the same question, yet no one really answered it. Did you ever find out if it was safe to remove Chess or what the list of definitely-do-not-delete apps/programs are? I also don't understand why someone cannot just answer the question you are asking instead of questioning your motives for asking!

Thanks. I did not initially see your response. It is the most thorough response but does not answer the question about what specifically cannot be removed. That would be helpful. For me however, it is a matter of space. Thanks again.

As I noted, you cannot remove Automator. If you have no plans to purchase anything from the App Store, you still can't remove the App Store app since it is also used for OS updates. You should also never remove Console, Activity Monitor, Keychain Access, Terminal, System Information, iTunes or Disk Utility. This also isn't necessarily a complete and comprehensive list of "never remove" items.

Otherwise, if you have no plans to ever use Font Book, Mission Control, iBooks, etc., you can delete every other app in the Applications folder if you want. Such as, do you always use Chrome or Firefox? If so, you can remove Safari. It's just another browser. Never plan on installing Windows? Then you don't need Boot Camp Assistant.

However, don't overdo it just because you can. You'd likely end up having to reinstall at least some items in the Applications or Utilities folder when you realize some day that, "Oops! I need that one."

Trash the ones you think are truly useless to both you and using the OS. Like Chess, FaceTime, Photo Booth and Reminders. Think twice about ones you may not use often, but are a useful tool, such TextEdit, Maps and others.

Given how old my initial response was, for El Capitan and later, you will also have to temporarily disable System Integrity Protection before you can delete any Apple installed apps. Even using sudo isn't enough to remove them with SIP enabled.

Also be aware removing apps only removes the main app itself. A lot of supporting framework and other system files the apps use will still be on the drive. They'll just be orphaned without an app to invoke their use. DO NOT try to dig into the system to remove these related files. Remove too much, or the wrong items, and you can easily end up with a non-bootable computer.

Before removing the apps, copy them to an external drive. It's a heck of a lot easier to copy back apps you decide you do need than reinstalling the OS to get them back on the drive.

I suppose it depends on what you think you may gain from deleting them. PhotoBooth and Chess for example take up a total of about 10MB only. So they won't gain you much ground. You can move them to a miscellaneous folder, where they won't be updated, but that probably won't matter if you won't be using them. But others such as Safari, Mail, etc. can cause a great deal of headaches if deleted.

Cheers

I use few of the pre-installed applications for SL. I only pulled them from the dock and left them installed.

You are seriously overthinking this.

Leave the 10 MB of apps alone, and start learning about CarboCopyClone or SuperDuper as a "build a clone-backup" to be able to rebuild. Alsp buy an external hard disk from macsales.com to make that clone.

Also you need to just spend time reaing the forums ... reading an learning about PRAM and SMC resets ... learning about how to make a "thumb-drive Recovery Partition" in case you need to reinstall the system.

Learn what is *important* about Mac and forget about things that all of the "forum veterans" will tell you are irrelevant.

Go ahead and say it, overkill right?

Right.