Mac applications are not like Windows

© December 2005 Tony Lawrence

If you are a Windows user, you know that installing software is quite a production. There's special "Installer" software that runs, and if you ever want to remove the program you have to run a special un-installer. It's all very high tech and full of voodoo, so when you first see a Mac install telling you to just drag something to your applications folder, you may feel like you must be missing something or that dropping something in Applications triggers some mysterious "installation" event.

Nope. In fact, you don't even have to drag the app into Applications. Make your own folder and put it there. It will (almost always) work fine.

And to uninstall, just drag the thing to the trash. That's all. That may leave you with some orphaned preference files and some stuff in cache, but that's all.

There are reasons to install in /Applications; if there's more than one user on your system, that avoids having to reinstall for each user. But if it's you and only you, you can (almost always) put 'em wherever you want.

There is a very long thread at https://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.mac.misc/browse_frm/thread/fe9372f8dc8116a6/ that hammers this subject to death, resuscitates it, and pounds it into oblivion yet again.

Got something to add? Send me email.

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