Apple’s Safari browser is one of the most popular browsers. Safari is the default web browser in all Apple gadgets; it was first released by Apple in 2003, and it was briefly available on Windows in 2007 and 2012. Safari’s popularity has soared with different Mac gadgets and iPhones, and the browser is currently the one most used around the world. Although Safari is an easy-to-use program and has an extensive array of features, less than 20 percent of web users use it around the world. Additionally, if you need to use another browser, you may want to know how to uninstall Safari on Mac. The following article can direct you to the right way to uninstall it.
Why do people want to uninstall Safari from their Mac gadgets? Reasons
Safari is an appealing web browser, especially for users rooted in the Apple ecosystem and owning a Mac and other Apple devices. Yet, it’s not always roses and butterflies:
- Inadequate Plugin Support
Safari supports Extensions, but the number of plugins available is less than the Chrome browser
- Restricted to Apple
While Safari is compatible with Linux, and it had a brief term of support for Windows, it is primarily designed for Apple hardware. Neither Android smartphones nor tablets can run it, and the Windows version no longer receives security updates from Apple.
- No Favicons
Favicons are essentially an icon for a website. However, Safari does not include these icons in the tabs, while browsers like Google Chrome do. They help users distinguish browser tabs so they can easily choose the one they want.
That’s the reason why most users do not use the Safari browser on their Mac gadgets and want to get rid of it.
Before uninstalling, consider these factors
When you delete Safari from your Mac gadget, you are also erasing lots of essential and valuable information and data. Check the following checklist and ensure that you’ve saved the necessary information before uninstalling Safari.
- Passwords
- Browsing history
- Bookmarks
- Extensions
Use Terminal to remove Safari from your Mac
Since Apple protects all of its native apps, such as Safari, with System Integrity Protection, uninstalling Safari is not a simple task for every Mac. To remove software, you must make sure that you have admin privileges to turn it off. Using Terminal is a convenient way to do this.
You can uninstall Safari with Terminal by following these steps:
- Turn your Mac on, then immediately press and hold the Cmd + R
- Go to the Utilities menu, and then select Terminal
- Turn off System Integrity Protection by entering csrutil disable and clicking the Return key
- Once that is done, restart your Mac
- Sign into Admin account
- Put sudo mount -uw/System/Applications into the Terminal window and hit the Return key
- After that, type your password when prompted
- Type cd/Applications/ and press Return
- Enter sudo rm -rf Safari.app/, and then hit Return
- On the next screen, enable System Integrity Protection
How to remove Safari manually from your Mac
If you use the latest macOS or an earlier version, you can easily remove Safari manually. It may not be the most effective method of uninstalling the browser, but it works. For this purpose, it’s necessary to access the directories of macOS libraries from the storage device.
To delete Safari manually from your Mac, follow these steps:
- Open the Finder
- Please search for and delete all files containing the word ‘Safari’ in their names under the following directories:
- /Users/Your Name/Library/
- /Users/Your Name/Library/Address Book Plug-Ins/
- /Users/Your Name/Library/Preferences
- /Users/Your Name/Library/Caches
- /Users/Your Name/Library/Saved Applications State
- /Users/Your Name/Library/Application Support/Crash Reporter/
- Send all these files of Safari to the Trash
- Finally, Remove all trash
But, users sometimes encounter the problem of improper uninstalling of Safari, which means it cannot be uninstalled properly. We will further discuss these problems.
Why can’t Safari be properly uninstalled?
There is no way to completely uninstall Safari because Safari is protected by Apple’s System Integrity Protection (SIP). Safety precautions like this have been present in macOS since El Capitan 10.11 to prevent the users from modifying macOS files. And, it is very hard to break by any user or hacker. That’s, there is now no way to uninstall Safari or any other native macOS app completely.
Apple did not make a bad decision, because you can still delete most of the files associated with Safari, leaving only a binary file that does not take up that much space on your Mac. But to tackle this problem, you can reset the Safari browser.
How can a Mac user reset Safari?
It is necessary to clear extensions, website data, and caches on Mac to reset Safari. It also aids the users to speed up Mac of theirs.
Here’s how to do the reset:
- Go to the Preferences menu in Safari
- Click the Manage Website Data tab, and then click Remove All (on the Privacy tab)
- Select Remove Now from the dialog box
- Check the box under Advanced that depicts the Show Develop menu in the menu bar
- Select Develop from the menu bar, then click Empty Caches
- Select each extension you would like to remove by clicking Uninstall at the bottom of the Extensions tab
Even after following these steps, if you continue to have problems. It is then time to look into some third-party optimization tools. In this scenario, the Mac Optimizer Pro application is one of the best software. In addition, it offers security and optimization features, such as Mac app uninstaller software, which allows you to remove any app in just a few clicks and speed up your macOS-enabled devices. Besides working with Mac disabilities, the program also addresses other issues that can arise. In particular, when applications and browsers are not responding, the system starts crashing and becoming non-responsive, and this optimizer helps to remedy the situation.
