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TUAW's Daily Mac App: AppTrap

AppTrap

With the imminent release of Lion, perhaps it's time to clear out all those apps you don't need anymore. AppTrap is an app up to the task, which integrates nicely into the OS X way of uninstalling apps.

We all know that the Mac way of uninstalling apps is just to delete them. The size of the preference files, settings and other cruft left behind is so small in comparison to modern disk sizes that you shouldn't have to worry about them. But what happens when you want to clear out your hard drive properly after each uninstall? Installed as a Preference Pane, AppTrap runs in the background watching for when you trash an application from your Applications folder. It will then locate any files associated with that application and ask you whether you want to trash them as well, removing the need for you to hunt them down manually.

Other uninstaller apps that we've featured on the Daily Mac App before primarily work along the Windows way of uninstalling. Select the app you want to uninstall from a list of installed programs and hit delete. But AppTrap enables you to continue deleting apps the way Apple wants you to, without leaving all that cruft behind. It's fast, effective and free.

If you install and delete loads of apps the Apple way, then the free AppTrap is a must. It's downloadable from the developer's site and supports Snow Leopard and the soon to be released Lion.

Thanks to hispidignoramus for the suggestion.



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Software Mac

With the imminent release of Lion, perhaps it's time to clear out all those apps you don't need anymore. AppTrap is an app up to the...
 

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waitWHAT

If you have a multi-user system, AppTrap, nor any of the mentioned alternatives, will touch those support files in the other user accounts.

July 15 2011 at 10:28 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
mguniverse

No thanks, I have AppZapper.

July 14 2011 at 9:03 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Frank Lowney

What I'm looking for is an app that looks at the applications in my Applications folder and the scouts out the prefs and app support files NOT associated with any of them and THEN offers me a way to zap them all at once.

July 14 2011 at 6:37 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Frank Lowney's comment
Dr. Sam Gibbs

There's an app coming up in this week's Daily Mac App series that will do roughly what you want. It scans for orphaned files. Works well.

July 16 2011 at 2:13 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Vero Pepperrell

Be warned that AppTrap works by monitoring your Trash and deleting preferences and caches relating to the apps you've deleted. As a result, if you have apps using the Sparkle update framework (a whole lot of Mac apps out there!), you are likely to lose your settings for these apps on upgrade where the previous version is placed into the Trash.

A number of Alfred users have flagged this up to us. This may have been fixed by now, but is a worthwhile warning when you've taken the time to tweak an app to your needs!

July 14 2011 at 5:09 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Vero Pepperrell's comment
Demure Demeanor

AppTrap asks for conformation, so as long as users pay attention when updating, they will be fine.

July 14 2011 at 5:17 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Björn Mildh

I use AppTrap and like it but it is a power tool for tech savvy people and you need to know when to chose trash or save. However, nothing gets deleted if you choose wrong, it just ends up in trash.

July 17 2011 at 2:42 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Derek

Nice.

July 14 2011 at 4:31 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
sip

AppZapper, which has been around for a long time, does the same thing, except as an application. You drag the app you want to delete/uninstall onto AppZapper's window and it searches out associated files and asks if you want to zap them. It moves these files to the Trash and deleting them is the user's responsibility.

July 14 2011 at 4:23 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to sip's comment
Gib

*facepalm

The point is you don't need to open an application to uninstall and delete another application. Drag to trash, and you are done... As they say, "It just works." Thanks for pointing this one out TÚAW. I promptly downloaded it, and dragged AppZapper to the trash. What do you know, its associated files got thrown away too.

July 14 2011 at 4:47 PM Report abuse +1 rate up rate down Reply
Dr. Sam Gibbs

If you're after something that does both, the previously featured AppCleaner will do what AppZapper does and what AppTrap does: http://www.tuaw.com/2011/06/23/tuaws-daily-mac-app-appcleaner/

July 15 2011 at 4:06 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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