Google plants unwanted extra icons in LaunchPad, how can I get rid of them?

Ugh! Naughty Google. 👿

For your information there is an open-source web-browser called Chromium which is based on the same web browser engine/code as Google Chrome. It maybe this will still have the built-in Flash player but not the excess baggage that Google Chrome has.

See https://www.chromium.org/Home

and http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/36244/chromium

and https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/canary.html

(Chromium Canary is more 'bleeding edge'.)

Jean Klare wrote:

The regular method (click and hold, then click the X) to delete these ‘apps’ does not work. Google made sure to flag that X to off.

Just FYI, as explained in the OS X help topic Install, update, and uninstall apps (link is to the online Yosemite version, but it is the same as the builtin help topic of the same name in El Capitan) Google has nothing to do with a delete X not appearing in Launchpad -- Launchpad can only be used to delete apps downloaded from the Mac App Store.

Also, I have Google Chrome installed & up-to-date on my iMac running El Capitan. This has not resulted in Google Search or YouTube being installed on it. But however they got on your system, it is very easy to uninstall them from within Chrome. Just do this:

1. In a new tab, open chrome://apps. (You can type this in the search bar or just click on the "Apps" icon in Chrome's bookmarks bar. It looks like a 3x3 grid of dots.)

2. Control-click the app and select Remove from Chrome.

3. A notice will appear asking if you want to remove the app. Click Remove.

Hello Jean,

We are just other Apple users here. If you want to send feedback to Apple, use the official Feedback page at: http://www.apple.com/feedback/ or, even better, file a bug report at: http://bugreport.apple.com/

I can easily reproduce what you are seeing. Just installing Google Chrome result in both a "Google Search" and "YouTube" app being added to LaunchPad. And yes, Google is being very clever about this. Unfortunately, this is all too common on the internet today. Virtually every major company, website, or ad that you might see has some kind of sneaky, Big Data-hosted logic behind it. You aren't the only one being tricked either.

The Apple Support Communities Terms of Use (Apple Support Communities Use Agreement) require us test our answers before posting. But that is not always possible. Depending on your cookies, IP address, or web browser signature, when you download software, you may get a completely different product than someone else even though both of you use the same URL at the exact same time. That may be why R C-R didn't see this. It isn't because I'm any smarter than he is, just luckier, or unluckier, depending on your perspective. I can confirm that R C-R's instructions about how to remove these Chrome apps does seem to work. But even the mechanism by which Google is adding these apps is sneaky. It isn't at all what I expected. When I first saw this thread, I had a solution in mind for you. But my solution wouldn't have worked because these Chrome apps are not what I had anticipated. They are something sneaky. Interestingly, after removing them, I was not able to add them back. I could re-add YouTube, but not "Google Search". I strongly suspect that a future "security update" or "bug" may restore these apps to our LaunchPad, and maybe even install some new ones.

Ultimately, I think you have the right idea. It would really be nice if Apple implemented a working installer/uninstaller architecture for the entire system, and not just its own Mac App Store ecosystem. That would solve a huge portion of the problems that people report here on Apple Support Communities.

Bottom right: Google search and YouTube. Please note: those icons are not apps (you can’t find them in your app folder) but a kind of redirects which open Googles webpages, in Chrome of course. My default browser setting is neglected. Atrocious back-door sneaky stuff meant to circumvent Mac OSX user settings, search engine preferences (long live Duckgoduck!) and promote more tracking and ad revenue. That‘s what you get for ‘not being evil.’ Boo Google!

Jean, this isn't Apple's problem. It's yours.

Unwanted Launchpad icons are just the beginning. Google insists upon installing a plethora of system-altering components that litter a Mac with numerous processes and "helpers" that are notorious for causing degraded performance in furtherance of Google's zeal to harvest your personal information by any means necessary. It does so by infesting a Mac with constantly running, automatically updating, resource-intensive root level system modifications in the same manner as a "computer virus" would, if such a thing were to exist on a Mac, which it doesn't.

It's your Mac. Do with it as you please, but by agreeing to install Chrome, you effectively cede control of it and the information it contains to Google. It effectively hijacks your Mac, turning it into a personal information-harvesting and -uploading "bot". Google doesn't care what that does to your Mac, they only care about the information they are able to gather from it, so that they can sell it. If you need to use Google products, expect the frequent need to upgrade your hardware at your expense.

I recommend you do not use Chrome or any other Google product. If Safari does not meet your requirements, consider using Firefox, or some other browser that does not require modifying your Mac's operating system for it to work.

when a site needs Adobe Flash

A website might need Adobe Flash Player, but you don't. Adobe Flash Player has been, and will always remain, a potential vector for malware intrusion. It is also notorious for causing degraded performance, wasted energy, instability, slowdowns and crashes. You ought to accelerate its well-deserved demise by not patronizing the sites that require it, but if you find you can't live without Adobe Flash Player, then obtain it directly from Adobe's website, here: https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/.

😁

I think the only way Apple would address developers who modify OS X would be to effectively restrict it in the same manner as iOS. There is nothing to stop Mac users from installing garbage of any description – yet. I doubt it will remain that way forever. You can complain to Apple, but be forewarned that you might just get what you ask for.

I have no idea why I get such different results regarding the Chrome apps than you do, but I have now tested this on another Mac that never had Chrome installed & I get the same results as in my other post -- none of the Google apps are installed unless I do the several steps I described earlier. Odd.

BTW, where these apps live is no mystery -- they are easy enough to find with Finder searches or with the System Information app in the Applications section. The app itself can be found in ~/Applications/Chrome Apps (the user, not system domain Applications folder).

Anyway, as apps go, from what I can tell at least the the YouTube app is very lightweight & does very little -- it just launches Chrome if it isn't already running, accesses https://www.youtube.com/ & terminates. It even has its own very ordinary looking Applescript dictionary.

As for changing any system or user level defaults, I can't see any indication that happens either. Just like Safari, it has its own user preference for setting the preferred search engine it (& only it) uses -- in fact, not only does it offer a whole bunch of them to choose from, it allows you to set up a custom one with any URL of your choice that points to a site's search function (if it has one). But you don't even have to do that: for example, enter "DuckDuckGo" in Chrome's search/URL box, click on the top hit (or just enter https://duckduckgo.com/ & hit return). That takes you to DuckDuckGo's search page with a convenient "Set DuckDuckGo as your default search engine" button at the bottom of the page. One more click & it is added to the "other search engines" list in Google's settings page (chrome://settings/) & from there you can make it Chrome's default search engine.

R C-R wrote:

BTW, where these apps live is no mystery -- they are easy enough to find with Finder searches or with the System Information app in the Applications section. The app itself can be found in ~/Applications/Chrome Apps (the user, not system domain Applications folder).

Anyway, as apps go, from what I can tell at least the the YouTube app is very lightweight & does very little -- it just launches Chrome if it isn't already running, accesses https://www.youtube.com/ & terminates. It even has its own very ordinary looking Applescript dictionary.

As for changing any system or user level defaults, I can't see any indication that happens either.

No, these apps are pretty funky. Google is a respected company with a well-known advertising-driven business model. Most people know that and either don't care, avoid it, or try hard to get value from Google while handing over as little as possible. In spite of internet meme, Google really isn't "evil". But, Google is very creative in terms of both social and technical engineering. The danger here is that real evil people will see what Google does and use those sneaky tricks for truly nefarious things.

These apps are a good example. They don't actually exist anywhere in Google Chrome. This is an application that, at some point after you first launch it, decides to start creating new apps. Yeah, maybe they are in the user domain, but those look the same in LaunchPad. A malicious app could create a new Safari, Mail, Twitter, or Word. Then it could ask for your password. The user thinks, I just launched Mail, must be another funky Apple bug, here's the password. Then the fake Mail launches the real Mail. The user never knows what just happened.

The user defaults are interesting too. I checked those when I tried to reinstall Google Chrome to get these apps re-created. I deleted all the Google preferences I could find, but I couldn't get it back to the original state. Granted, I didn't do a thorough forensic analysis or anything. But Google is really not being straightforward. Chrome does different things in different contexts. I first tried this on my burner machine where I had already run Chrome, but without actually "installing" it inside /Applications. I had just run it from the disk image. When I install Chrome in a VM, I actually get 4 different Chrome apps installed into the user Applications folder and LaunchPad. I'm not complaining about that. I'm just wondering why I didn't get all 4 the first time I tried.

Plus, the connection between chrome://apps and that user Applications directory is interesting. They are connected, but not completely. I can delete things from Chrome and they go away in ~/Applications and LaunchPad. I can delete things from ~/Applications and they go away in LaunchPad, but not Chrome. It seems pretty clear that Google's intent is to create its own Google Play web app ecosystem and have those apps colonize your Mac desktop. But this is Google and that is the kind of schtick they do. But I'm sure other people are going to get some ideas. I can envision some free and useful apps that, at random times, create new apps that perform malicious activities. Every day could be a brand-new zero-day.

Jean Klare wrote:

Apple shoud slam the door on this LaunchPad ghost-app thing ASAP. It seems likely we‘ll see instances of this kind of trojan horse LaunchPad icons sometime. It‘s not pretty.

I'm not sure what you want Apple to do. These are not "ghost" apps, just small apps that appear in Launchpad like any other app on your system. As I said, they can't be deleted from there because only apps downloaded from the Mac App Store (MAS) can be deleted from Launchpad. They are no different in that respect from any other non-MAS app on your system, including for example any app users save into their 'per-user' home folder's Applications folder, & can be deleted in the same ways those apps can.

They are not in any sense hiding -- you can find them by name using a Finder search or as I said with System Information.app; & of course Launchpad shows them -- if it did not that would be a concern.

As for being trojan horses, they are still subject to the same restrictions as any other user domain app.

etresoft wrote:

The user defaults are interesting too. I checked those when I tried to reinstall Google Chrome to get these apps re-created. I deleted all the Google preferences I could find, but I couldn't get it back to the original state. Granted, I didn't do a thorough forensic analysis or anything. But Google is really not being straightforward. Chrome does different things in different contexts. I first tried this on my burner machine where I had already run Chrome, but without actually "installing" it inside /Applications. I had just run it from the disk image. When I install Chrome in a VM, I actually get 4 different Chrome apps installed into the user Applications folder and LaunchPad. I'm not complaining about that. I'm just wondering why I didn't get all 4 the first time I tried.

I'm curious. Did you delete anything in the ~/Library/Application Support/Google folder during your testing? On my system there are two folders inside it, one named "Chrome" with tons of stuff in it & another named "RLZ" that has a plist file in it. The Chrome one seems to have a number of files that relate to the current app state, including 'extensions' items that appear to include these apps.

It seems pretty convoluted, but not any more so than with quite a few other apps of equal complexity, including several Apple ones.