[lm411]

> There's not even a built-in way to uninstall programs in macOS. It's bizarre.

You literally just drag the app to the trash can. Properly sandboxed Mac apps are a delight to uninstall.

Yes, some apps are more difficult, but those are usually Windows apps that are crudely ported to MacOS and that's on the developers for not creating proper MacOS apps.

[bmitc]

Yes. Everyone knows that. But that doesn't uninstall the application. It just deletes the top files. It doesn't remove any caching or configurations or other files in other parts of the system like a Windows uninstaller does. To do that on macOS, there are third-party apps that provide this functionality.

[ricardobeat]

This is by design. Mac apps don't leave tons of trash around like their windows counterparts. Only some config files, always in a standard location. So when you reinstall, everything just works. Your data lives in iCloud or the documents folder, and is not meant to be deleted when you uninstall.

[bmitc]

I don't recall that being true.

[int_19h]

Windows uninstallers generally don't remove configurations and cached data, either.

[bmitc]

Not in my experience, the majority of the time. Those that don't are usually Linux ported apps that don't utilize the install functionality properly. The point is that the OS provides the tools to do so.

[int_19h]

Not removing settings is in fact the standard and expected behavior for MSI-based installers (i.e. those using OS-provided tools). The framework is very paranoid about tracking the origin of every artifact (files, registry keys etc), and removing something in the uninstaller that installer did not add is considered a huge no-no. It is also what users generally expect - if they uninstall and later reinstall, they want their settings to be there.

Providing the ability to remove settings is something that has to be explicitly implemented (because the installer infrastructure cannot track files created outside of the installer), so relatively few apps actually do that. Those that do pretty much always do it as an opt-in. In my 30 years of Windows use, I don't recall a single example to the contrary.