Comments on: How to uninstall Mac OS X .pkg packages

By: Sharninder

Sharninder — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 01:05:48 +0000

I don’t think so. As far as I know, Mac OS X doesn’t really make use of the receipts.

By: Robert Z.

Robert Z. — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 19:45:24 +0000

I deleted all old receipts from 2010 and older. Is that a bad thing? I booted up apps and they seem to be fine.

By: Thomas Glasgow

Thomas Glasgow — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 00:05:06 +0000

Beware, pkgutil doesn’t detect everything installed.

I was trying to get rid of a Lame component for Quicktime and pkgutil didn’t find anything. Fortunately in the installer I was able to show all files and track them on my hard drive.

OSX deserves a decent uninstaller system.

By: Trent

Trent — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 10:35:06 +0000

Another way would be to use a software called Appzapper.

By: pepikkk

pepikkk — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 10:44:52 +0000

Tanks Bob & Sharninder :D Nice posts !!!

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 16:59:08 +0000

Thanks for this! I wasn’t able to find the package receipt for the program I installed but, if you look in the .pkg file that installed the app, you will find all the necessary BOM files and, from there, the process is the same.

Thanks a million!

By: Tweets that mention How to uninstall Mac OS X .pkg packages | Geeky Ninja -- Topsy.com

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 21:23:36 +0000

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By: Sharninder

Sharninder — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 09:01:09 +0000

I agree Luigi. Apple should really come up with something like an apt installer. My post was only to make a point and teach the readers a little about how the .pkg files work.

By: Luigi R. Viggiano

Luigi R. Viggiano — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 20:54:08 +0000

Cool.

Now suppose a file, let’s say a library, is listed in a bom, but that file was already present in the system because some other app was installing the same library, following this method you will delete a shared library and you will break dependent programs relying on the file you have just deleted.

My approach is now changed to: if a program is provided with .pkg format, don’t install it unless strictly necessary or it provides an uninstaller.

Also read here: http://ildan.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-to-uninstall-mac-os-x-packages-pkg.html

Notice that, in my case the files listed in the bom was with relative path:
./share/man/man3/gv.3ruby
./share/man/man3/gv.3tcl
./share/man/man3/gvc.3

I found out that those files where where installed under /usrl/local
At first I decided to go for removal, but after I tought that some shared libraries like
./lib/graphviz/libgvplugin_neato_layout.dylib
could be used by other apps.
So I reinstalled the application, and I am gonna keep it, just to prevent breaking other apps.

Coming from Linux and apt packages, I’ll seriously think to punch in the face the next guy who tells me that OSX installs are cool.

By: Sharninder

Sharninder — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 02:59:15 +0000

That’s pretty cool Bob. I upgraded (from Tiger) last night and can see now that pkgutil is a much better way to view details about all the packages installed. I think the pkgutil –unlink command can also be used to perform an uninstall instead of manually deleting files.