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The Windows Terminal is a modern, fast, efficient, powerful, and productive terminal application for users of command-line tools and shells like Command Prompt, PowerShell, and WSL. Its main features include multiple tabs, panes, Unicode and UTF-8 character support, a GPU accelerated text rendering engine, and custom themes, styles,. The Terminal is a widely used application for getting to the OS X underpinnings, and we frequently recommend using it to tackle small problems in OS X. If you are a regular Terminal user, because. Mar 10, 2014 Command Line Primer. Historically, the command line interface provided a way to manipulate a computer over simple, text-based connections. In the modern era, in spite of the ability to transmit graphical user interfaces over the Internet, the command line remains a powerful tool for performing certain types of tasks.
How to uninstall programs on Mac computers? If you are familiar with the “Uninstall a program” interface in Windows operating system (OS), then I would tell you it doesn’t exist on Mac OS X. To uninstall a program on Mac OS X, just drag the program icon and drop to the Trash, then right-click and clear it.
But do you know how to uninstall applications on your Mac computer, which don’t have shortcuts/icons (which you can drag and drop to the Trash) or uninstall other built-in system applications?
Uninstalling Mac apps is a simple process and don’t take more than five seconds. However, some apps require you to use Terminal or third party applications to uninstall them.
Uninstalling programs from your Mac computer are probably easier than removing applications from other operating systems, such as Windows or Linux OS.
In Windows OS, you need access to Control Panel > Programs and Features > Pick the application you want to remove > Confirm again > Wait for the process to complete.
See Also: How To Force Quit Mac Apps In Mac OS X?
But in the Mac OS X computer, the uninstall process is simpler. You just need to select the Application that you want to remove (from the Desktop or Finder > Applications).
Next, right-click on the application icon > Move to Trash. Or you can also delete it by dragging the program icon and drop it to the Trash.
After the application has been moved to the Trash, right-click on the Trash and choose “Empty Trash”. The application will be uninstalled.
With above steps, you have known it’s very easy to remove apps from a Mac computer if they appear in the Application folder or somewhere else which you can “move to the Trash“. But how about applications that aren’t there, such as Java runtime, Flash plugin or browser plugins?
There is no general method to uninstall these apps & built-in features. Instead, you can find appropriate ways to uninstall these programs from Google Search. You can use the search terms: “uninstall [application name] on Mac” with “application name” is the name of the app you want to remove/uninstall.
For example, Adobe has released a solution to help you removing Flash on your Mac computer, find out here.
You can easily uninstall any unwanted apps on your Mac. However, some of them can leave a few preference files, caches or logs in your hard drive.
If you want to remove a Mac app altogether, try a free program called AppCleaner. This will allow you to uninstall unwanted programs on your Mac computer with its data and related files.
From the “Application” tab of the AppCleaner, you can select a program or widget to remove/uninstall. Check it out!
Another useful feature of the AppCleaner is allowing you to massive delete apps. To doing so, just select all apps that you want to remove, and then click on the “Delete” button. Don’t need to remove all of them one by one, right?
Most of users don’t like to use commands in Terminal to do anything because those commands are not easy to remember. They feel not comfortable and will look for solutions which easier to do, such as an app with a friendly and simple user interface. However, using Terminal to removing Mac apps is easier than you think.
Firstly, open Finder, click on the Applications > Utilities, find Terminal application and then launch it.
Next, type:
sudo uninstall file://
Next, drag the program icon from Applications into Terminal window and drop it there. And then press Enter. The application will be uninstalled automatically.
In this case, I use Google Chrome an object to show you how to uninstall programs on Mac with Terminal.
If you have installed any applications from the Apple AppStore, just click on Launchpad, press Option key on your keyboard.
Next, click on the (x) sign and press Delete to remove the app. It will be removed.
In this method, you don’t need to empty the Trash as it will delete the program directly, not moving to the Trash.
If you know any other solutions to simplify the uninstall process? Let me know!
Have any questions about how to uninstall programs on Mac OS X computers? Feel free to ask by leaving your comment below.
OS X's command line and I have never been what I'd call 'friendly'; rather, we have a mutual respect and understanding about not messing with each other. (Well, as much of a mutual respect as one can have between a human being and a code window.)
While the average person should never have any reason to visit Terminal, Apple's command line interface app actually does give you access to quite a few neat tricks and shortcuts... if you're willing to take a peek.
Apple's Terminal app is a direct interface to OS X's bash shell — part of its UNIX underpinnings. When you open it, Terminal presents you with a white text screen, logged in with your OS X user account by default.
Here's the important part: With a system administrator account and password, you have direct access to tweaking almost everything about your computer's software code; that means that while this little window provides great power, it comes with great responsibility. In short, be careful before using Terminal to execute commands, and make sure you understand what you're typing.
You can also use Terminal to securely connect to other machines, web servers, and even create your own scripts, but those are how-tos for another day. For now, we're going to focus on using Terminal to explore your own computer.
Before we get started with the fun stuff, let's learn some basic Terminal terminology and commands. These form the framework for more complex interactions (aka, the fun stuff).
You can type something in the Terminal window until you're blue in the face, but it won't execute until you press the Return key on your keyboard. At that point, it will either return an error if you've typed something incorrectly, or the command will execute.
Unless you're executing a command that requires the display of text in Terminal, you won't have any indicator that what you've done has been successful; you'll just get a new line with your user name on it once the command is finished processing.
When writing commands and paths in Terminal, almost everything is case sensitive: This means that you need to remember to properly capitalize 'Dock' when referring to the Dock, or OS X won't understand your command.
You can use Terminal to get direct access to your files without using the Finder. To do so, you build something called a path. Paths look similar in some ways to website sub-directories, and follow the structure of your folders.
Paths take two forms: absolute paths and relative paths. An absolute path starts at the root level of your hard drive, and is displayed as '/'. So if you wanted to make a path to your Applications folder, you would write '/Applications/'.
Relative paths are defined based on where you've already navigated to, and represented by './'. For instance, if you go to the '/Applications/' folder in Terminal, that's your current working directory (cwd). You can then get to your Utilities folder by typing './Utilities/' rather than '/Applications/Utilities'.
When you first launch Terminal, you're starting in the current working directory of /Users/myusername/ (also known as your User folder).
To actually put all this path knowledge to use, you'll need the Terminal commands for displaying and changing files.
ls: The 'ls' command, by itself, displays the contents of the cwd. So if I were just to type 'ls' in Terminal, it would display the contents of my user directory:
You can optionally add an absolute or relative or path if you want to view a different directories. So, for example, if I wanted to view the Utilities folder inside Applications, I could type 'ls /Applications/Utilities/'. This won't change your current working directory, but it'll let you view other directories on your hard drive.
You can add options to view more information about that directory. The options for 'ls' include:
cd: Where the 'ls' command lets you view a directory, the 'cd' command will actually move to that directory (change your cwd). For instance, if after viewing the Utilities folder, you want to move to it, you'd type 'cd /Applications/Utilities/'.
pwd: Write this command by itself to help you remember the path of your current directory. When typed into terminal, it will print the full path of your cwd.
man: This command, followed by another Unix command, lets you read the Unix manual about the second command. This is super useful if you want to try a cool Terminal trick you found online, but aren't sure what those commands actually do.
For instance, typing 'man ls' will get you information on the 'ls' command, which lists directory contents.
defaults: This command is often used in Terminal tips and tricks to tweak applications and system settings via their preference files. You can use it to do things like disable transparency in the menu bar, always show your scroll bars, change trackpad behavior, and much much more. You'll usually see this paired with either 'write' and a string, as with this:
The code above lets you save all your screenshots as JPGs instead of the system default PNG.
killall: If you execute a Terminal command that affects any system process or app, you're going to need to reboot the process to make it take effect. 'killall' followed by the process will do so. (This is also another way to force quit misbehaving apps or processes if your Force Quit menu isn't behaving.) Remember, this command and its target are case sensitive.
ln: OS X has long offered aliases, which let you create links to files, folders, and applications elsewhere in the system without having to duplicate them. Unfortunately, certain apps don't play well with aliases. With the link command 'ln -s', you can create a low-level, UNIX-based symbolic link which most system processes will recognize. Likely, you'll never have to make a symbolic link, but on the off-chance you want to perform a Terminal trick that requires them, this is how you do it.
The first path listed is your original file's path; the second path is where you'd like your symbolic link.
chflags: This commands lets you view and change the flags on a file or folder. For most people, the only flags you're going to care about are 'hidden' and 'nohidden', which hide and unhide documents, respectively.
sudo: If you spend any time online, you've probably heard of 'sudo' before. This is Unix's override command, and lets you execute any command as an administrator — provided, of course, that you have the requisite password and permissions. It probably goes without saying, but as a Terminal beginner, it's generally a good idea not to mess with commands like 'sudo' unless you are 100 percent sure what you're doing.
say: Feeling lonely? You can make your computer say anything you like with the 'say' command, and you can even record it in audio format to your desktop, if you so choose.
telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl: This isn't technically something local to your Mac, but it's my all-time favorite Terminal trick. Some kind soul on the internet made an all-ASCII version of Star Wars: A New Hope; run the following code, and you'll be treated to a full showing. If it doesn't make you smile just a little bit, you might be dead inside.
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