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News.app, Stocks.app, GarageBand... when you try to delete them, you are forbidden because they are "protected" apps. I tried disabling SIP (System Integrity Protection) and still could not delete News.

I also tried running the sudo rm -rf news.app command in Terminal and nothing happened.

So I revealed package contents and deleted its guts instead.

How can we regain normal admin powers?

bmike
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ChangeMachine
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    What's the point of deleting the app contents if you are not deleting the entire app? Why do you hate it so much?(they don't even take up much space) – airsquared Feb 06 '19 at 23:18
  • You do not need to disable SIP in order to delete e.g. Chess.app on SIP enabled systems, simply boot to Recovery Mode, (⌘R when restarting the Mac), and then in Terminal (on the Utilities menu)... e.g. rm -rf /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Applications/Chess.app and then type reboot and press enter to restart the Mac back to normal mode boot. Obviously if your normal Startup Disk is not Macintosh HD, then substitute the correct name in the command line. Note: Deleting with rm files are not placed in the Trash and typically cannot be recovered. – user3439894 Feb 06 '19 at 23:30
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    Please clarify the specific problems you face. Eg the error message you got for your try on News.app (Note the case for News: sudo rm -rfv /Appl*/News.app should be different?) – LаngLаngС Mar 02 '19 at 09:50
  • Since Apple designs and tests the system to have these frameworks, keep in mind “normal admin powers” means breaking other parts of the system that might need these frameworks to work. I’m not saying you shouldn’t delete these, but perhaps caution others that there is stability and possibly security harm in removing protected apps and frameworks. There are also some errors in your post. Garage Band is not SIP protected and you may not have disabled SIP since that’s the only thing restricting you from using normal rm/chflags/chmod commands. – bmike Mar 02 '19 at 16:21
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    +1 for asking this. Everyone gets the right to modify and learn how to change the OS. – bmike Mar 02 '19 at 18:45
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    Sincere thanks, @bmike! The amount of crusading I've seen against this and similar questions has really tarnished my opinion of MacOS and the "community" around it. The down-voters are very vocal, without specifying any reason more substantive than "Those files are small!" Meanwhile, the upvoters haven't said much. This forum is, by definition, more of a fanclub than not. People need to realize it's okay to "think different" (even from Apple). – ChangeMachine Mar 03 '19 at 18:52
  • Re: Garage Band, I was trying to uninstall it because the App Store said "update" but wouldn't update. Reinstalling OS fixed my App Store woes, but it didn't fix the frozen black screen issue that I've experience on both a brand new 2018 MBP, as well as its replacement that was supposed to fix that bug. I'm not bashing Apple when I say I'm not sure what's a bug and what's a feature in Mojave. Lately, my sudoers file seems to be owned by 501 instead of 0. And I don't have permission to chown it, though that's the advice I read. And I'm not sure Apple wants me to anyway. – ChangeMachine Mar 03 '19 at 19:07

1 Answers1

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Warning:

Whatever you consider bloatware, you may continue to consider bloatware, and have my blessing for doing so and voicing it. Problem is: Apple is evidently not considering at least the applications you listed as such. While I do not see any legitimate use for the applications you listed, they are perhaps interacting in not really foreseen ways with other applications and services that you may want to actually use!
So while it's possible to remove stuff Apple installs as and with the flags for "essential", think twice after making a backup before you really delete any. Also keep in mind that the stuff under /Applications is usually not everything: also look for stuff like Frameworks, Daemons etc. Just deleting a GUI app may not provide much if any of the benefit you're seeking.

Solution:

Boot from another partition.

Use an external disk or recovery.

SIP and other measures only protect internal boot drives. Once "Macintosh HD" isn't the boot drive you might do what you want with that partition.

For example:

– Boot into RecoveryMode.
– Mount "Macintosh HD"
– Start deleting

Pending clarification from the asker – For the frame the current question presents in its example:

With SIP disabled it should be possible to delete these applications from Terminal, booted from the regular boot partition, provided the path is actually spelled correctly, in this case with capital case at the start:
sudo rm -rv /Applications/News.app
It might be necessary to precede a sudo chflags norestricted FILE2DEL in some cases.

Related questions on Ask Different, showing the evolution of the problem over time and changing system policies:
– Can I delete any of the default apps the come with OS X?
– How to remove Apple System Apps
– How can I remove Chess from my mac?

LаngLаngС
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  • ˋrm -rfvˋ lists files as they are deleted but suppresses error messages. Maybe ˋrm -rvˋ is the better approach here. – nohillside Mar 02 '19 at 13:46
  • @nohillside Thx. Bad habits. Also have to keep reminding myself that gnu always has some differences to bsd that come to bite us here… – LаngLаngС Mar 02 '19 at 14:00
  • Thanks LangLangC (and everyone). I take your warnings and advice to heart and advise others to do the same. But... breaking Macs is how we learn ;) Unfortunately I don't have time right now to focus on this issue (or even figure out why my utterly new 2018 Vega20 MBP is freezing up on reboot). I will try to verify the advice given. – ChangeMachine Mar 03 '19 at 19:18
  • Re: "Bloatware", it succinctly conveys "unwanted, preinstalled apps", but I can appreciate that removing "bloatware" from the title keeps a certain decorum in the forum (no poetry intended). It's the level of concern over the word that concerns me. Would anyone here quibble if I'd asked about uninstalling Candy Crush or anything else from Windows 10 (which Microsoft makes painlessly easy)? – ChangeMachine Mar 03 '19 at 19:53
  • @ChangeMachine The terms you used gave me zero trouble reading them. If you suspect a troublesome, intransparent or un-understandable behaviour from other users or site-policy here, you might want head over to [meta], search for previous discussions on this or open a new question about this there. Your Q needed some editing, but if 'bloatware' is indeed the reason for sticking downvotes from regulars here, then I agree that is a reason for concern. – LаngLаngС Mar 04 '19 at 10:01
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    Thanks, LangLangC. I didn't intend to direct that comment at you, personally. Sorry. I'm tempted to take this Apple protectionism issue to Meta. Thinking Apple is perfect is a person's right, but calling people "Apple bashers" (as someone did in a related Q I posted) any time their question implies Apple is flawed... Well isn't that the POINT of this forum? But like you'all, I've got work to do (and Mojave bugs to deal with). – ChangeMachine Mar 05 '19 at 19:31
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    Granted, Apple is not considering bloatware apps like Stocks or Chess. Actually I can hardly imagine any hw producer considering bloatware the factory set apps it ships along with his hardware. Granted also that each and every user is fully free to consider or not consider as bloatware what he/she gets when buying new hardware. Nonetheless, as a programmer of the "good old days", it somehow scares me that more and more pure financial tools (like Stocks) or "potentially opinion moving" stuff (like Apple TV) are being considered as part of the bare operating system! –  Oct 13 '19 at 07:53