Crazy Apple News Site

Every Friday¹ we publish a list of inFrequently Answered Questions and answers to help you, the Crazy Apple user, get more out of your Crazy Apple products.

This week we try again to cover that venerable remover of unloved programs, AppZapper!

Q: So why would I need to zap an app, again?

A: Well, if you’re not using it, it’s just making your Applications folder unwieldy. You should get rid of it.

Q: So…This program drags it to the trash so I don’t have to drag it to the trash myself?

A: Well, yeah, but it also finds all the other files associated with the app, and drags them to the trash as well.

Q: What “other files”?

A: All applications have support files that get scattered around. Some are just preference files that get stored in your user directory, some are library files, and it can be a pain to round them all up. So AppZapper does it for you.

Q: uh huh.  So, what happens if I leave those files in place?

A: You have a lot of useless files clogging up your important directories after a while.

Q: And other programs run slower?

A: Probably not. But it’s possible that a new program will try to reference a file from an older one. Also, these preference files store things like “this program is past it’s free trial period”, so you zap a trial app, re-install it, and you have a new trial period!

Q: Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place! Bwa ha ha ha ha! I’ll never buy shareware again! I’m free! Free! Does it work on itself?

A: Possibly?

Q: Free!

A: This could have gone better.

Unexpected third person: I’ll say! I liked the ending with the goat from last week much better.

A: Huh. That was unexpected.

1. ish [↩]