How to Uninstall Apps on Lion 10.7

If you have an installed app and you no longer need or want it on your Mac there are two ways to un-install these on Lion. The first is the easier way and only pertains to apps that were purchased or installed from the Mac app store and is the same method if you were to delete or remove apps on any iDevice.

This is taking under consideration that you are familiar with Lion.

First access Launch Pad:

Then just click and hold any app until it starts to wiggle and a small “x” will show on the upper left corner:

At this point just click the “x” on the app that you want to remove and your done. That’s pretty easy right?

To remove/Un-install third-party apps is a little different. You could just drag the app into your trash and that would remove the app but what it doesn’t remove is the associated files that the apps creates. There are a couple of apps that can do this but I will be talking about AppZapper. Just like dragging an app to your trash can you can drag it to AppZapper to remove both the app and all associated files. once you drag the app into the window click the Zap! button and POOF, it’s gone.

I will be showing you another method to remove an app. If you click the drop down switch at the top right of AppZapper’s window it will show you all of your apps and anything else you installed. You are also able to set parameters to only show apps of a certain size, or apps not used in a certain amount of days as well as by name. There is also another option to view by just apps, Widgets, third-party settings (like Growl) and then by other items like installed like screen savers. Use the icons in the upper left corner for these views.

Now just select the app to remove.

From the image above I will be removing the Mechanical Clock app the I purchased from the Mac app store. Once you choose the app, AppZapper will show you all related files in the lower section of the window. Now just click the Zap! button.