Uninstalling a Mac app

I've tried to set up a MBP with the Canon Digital Photo Professional software and associated utilities to allow tethered shooting with a Canon DSLR. I was more or less working as I wanted it until I ran an update to the software from the Canon website. It now won't shoot tethered as I can't see a version of the capture software that works with the latest version of the Digital Photo Professional program, so I put the original disk that came with the camera back in and tried to re-install the old version over the top of the new one. Unfortunately the installer aborts as it says there is a newer version installed. I moved the DPP app folder to trash and tried again but still I get the same message. How can I fully uninstall an app so that the installer for the old version can't see the new one? I also tried deleting any preference files from /Library that looked relevant but that didn't seem to help either.

Regards,
Steve

Edited by sjr (Sat 26-Jun-10 12:58:18)

There is a handy program called cleanmymac http://macpaw.com/cleanmymac that will do what you require.

hace a rummage through <user>/Library/Preferences (and also application support) to see if any files have been left behind.

AppCleaner always works well for me. But you need the app to be there in the first place for it to do its stuff.

If the installer left a receipt, you can look at that to see what was installed and where. Look for a receipt in /Library/Receipts/ and scroll through the list looking for a package with the right application name. Receipts are only left by programmes that used the Apple installer to install them. If there isn't a package, you might just find a Bill Of Materials in the boms folder inside the receipts folder - look for com.canon.whatever.pkg.bom.

You can open receipts and boms with Pacifist, which shows you the files installed and where they were put.

I tried AppDelete and while it found a few things it didn't cure the problem. In the end I had to resort to terminal to find all the files that had been modified today

find / -name *canon* -mtime -10h -print

That showed me all the files that had been modified in the last 10 hours so it was fairly easy to see what had to go after deleting the obvious stuff.

Regards,
Steve

Yep, I'll go with CleanmyMac. It works for me

If I recall correctly, it will remove up to 200 MB in Demo version. so set it up right and it should do just what you want.

I use AppCleaner - very easy to use if you have the whole App. and also CleanApp

Have used both - prefer AppCleaner and it does do what it says - looks around - gets hold of everything to do with the App and will then remove the lot in one fell swoop once you hit the button.

Thought ----- you said you had put the folder in the trash - have you emptied Trash since ? If not remove the folder from Trash and park it on your desktop and then try one of the deleting packages again

Edited by goldenoldie (Sun 27-Jun-10 14:36:31)

I use AppZap (sometimes) and CleanMyMac mainly.

It does a smashing job.

http://www.syniumsoftware.com/cleanapp/

My favourite is CleanApp with logging enabled to keep track of installs. I wish Apple would build this feature into the OS even if it meant forcing the use of native Installer APIs. I don't know if my general awareness has improved or whether apps are just becoming more untidy but many uninstall apps provided by their respective developers fail to do the job properly.