Bring all messengers into one
Click “Launchpad” in the Dock Find the app icon that you want to remove Press and hold the Alt (⌥) key, or click and hold the app icon until it jiggles Click the cross next to the app that you want to remove and click “Delete” to remove the app and app icon immediately form your Mac. In this video we'll go over how to officially and permanently delete messages from the Messages app on Mac OS X Yosemite.
IM+ keeps all your chats within one handy Mac app.
Text messaging is so ingrained into our days that it’d be difficult to imagine our lives without it. One can say texting is the perfect form of non-disruptive, asynchronous communication, since you only participate in it when convenient for you, as opposed to other real-time alternatives like calling.
Eventually, simple text messages (SMS) evolved to incorporate images and audio (MMS). In the meantime, the use of instant messaging (IM) software online, with AIM and Windows Live, was growing rapidly as well. Those two words collided and essentially merged with each other with the release of the iPhone.
Right now, most of us use at least a few messaging apps: Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram, Skype, Snapchat, etc. Apple’s own iMessage, both on iPhone and Mac, remains wildly popular too, as well as regular text messaging. But, with so many services, how much data do we generate? And what’s the best way to keep all this data private?
Safest way to delete messages
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Why Delete iMessage History On Mac?
First of all, the most secure way to ensure your conversations stay private on your devices is to only use apps that allow for end-to-end encryption, which prevents anyone (including the service provider) from eavesdropping on anything you say. Apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, and iMessage are already using end-to-end encryption to protect your privacy.
Second, it’s better to be safe than sorry. Even with end-to-end encryption in place, someone who takes possession of your phone can read anything you’ve sent or received. That’s where knowing how to delete all messages on Mac or iPhone regularly can help. Let’s go through a somewhat comprehensive checklist for keeping your iMessage history clean from any unwanted correspondence.
How to enable iMessage across devices
As you know, regular text messages and iMessages share the same Messages app on your iPhone. One of the advantages of using iMessage then is not only getting the secure end-to-end encryption but also being able to use it across devices — on your Mac, for example.
To turn on iMessage on your Mac:
- Goodnotes mac app store. Open the Applications folder (⌘ + Shift + A) and launch the Messages app
- Go to Preferences (⌘ + ,) and switch to the iMessage tab
- Check “Enable this account” and “Enable Messages in iCloud”
- Click Sync Now
Now your iMessages will synchronize on your Mac and iPhone, so you can read and reply to any text from either device. Additionally, you can check the boxes in the “You can be reached for messages at” menu if you want to allow people to text you just by knowing your email.
If you’re wondering how to turn off iMessage on Mac at any time, simply uncheck the “Enable Messages in iCloud” option.
How to delete iMessages on Mac
To keep your conversations private, iMessage has a simple way for how to delete messages on Mac. You can use this method to delete either yours or someone else’s messages:
- Open any conversation within your Messages app
- Find a message you want to delete, right-click on it, and select Delete…
- Click Delete to confirm
Note: When you delete an iMessage on Mac, it only removes the message on your side. The recipient will still see all the messages on their devices.
How to delete multiple messages on Mac
While knowing how to delete text messages on Mac is crucial to being able to occasionally hide sensitive data, sometimes you might want to find out how to delete all messages on messenger to leave little trace of whole conversations.
Here’s how to delete all iMessages on Mac:
- In Messages, click on the conversation you want to delete
- Go File ➙ Delete Conversation… from the menu bar. Alternatively, you can right-click on the conversation on the left side and select Delete Conversation… from there. A third option is to highlight the conversation and then simply hit ⌘ + Delete.
- Confirm Delete
How to delete all messages on Mac automatically
As you can see, deleting occasional messages or whole conversations is easy when you have to do it just a few times here and there. But the process is still largely manual and it’s very easy to forget to delete a specific message if you can be bombarded with new ones all the time.
Luckily, it’s possible to set a sort of destructive timer on your iMessage on Mac, which would automatically delete everything past a certain date. Here’s how:
- Open the Messages app and then Preferences (⌘ + ,)
- Click the “Keep messages” dropdown and select whether to let your messages stay in the app for 30 days, one year, or forever
Now you don’t have to worry about any messages lingering on for longer than they should.
How to clear iMessage transcripts
Sometimes, you might be having a private rapid-fire conversation with a few people at the same time and want to periodically delete all the messages so far but still keep the discussion going. Deleting the conversation outright wouldn’t be optimal here as it would close the tab completely, interrupting the flow.
Surprisingly, iMessage has another function for that called Clear Transcript, which simply deletes all the messages in any given conversation but keeps the window open. To use Clear Transcript:
- Open any conversation in the Messages app
- Select Edit ➙ Clear Transcript (⌘ + Option + K) from the menu bar
How to close conversations temporarily
Another option that the Messages app on Mac offers is to simply hide or close conversations without deleting any content in them. That way no one would see that conversations ever took place, but you’d also get the full history back once someone in the chat sends a new message.
To close any conversation in Messages:
- Go to Preferences and then check or uncheck “Save history when conversations are closed” https://perksnew149.weebly.com/blog/mac-address-lookup-database-download.
- Hover over the conversation on the left side and click the X symbol just below the date
How to delete all iMessages on Mac forever
Using any of the options above should be more than enough to help you keep your life private. But if you want to absolutely make sure that no trace of your messages is left behind, you might wonder where are iMessages stored on Mac?
Fortunately, your Mac makes it easy to dive straight into your Library folder and delete the Messages files (or back them up somewhere safe) manually:
- Open Messages ➙ Preferences ➙ iMessage and then Sign Out
- Quit the Messages app
- From the menu bar, choose Go ➙ Go to Folder (⌘ + Shift + G)
- Type in ~/Library/Messages and then Go
- God of war iso file download for android. Delete Archive and Attachments folders as well as chat.db, chat.db-shm, and chat.db-wal
- Restart your Mac
It might take some time for Messages to reconfigure itself the next time you use it, but all the files and conversations should now be gone.
What are the best messaging apps for Mac
Even though knowing how to turn off messages on Mac is quite invaluable, iMessage is just one type of an instant messaging service out there, and most of us use at least a handful of its competitors. What apps should we install to rule the messaging world?
ChatMate for WhatsApp is a powerful and blazing fast WhatsApp client for Mac that cares about your privacy by letting you hide text previews, tweak notifications, and enable Stealth Mode, which only displays messages when you hover over them. The app also locks itself, provides Touch ID supports, and features a truly customizable interface.
Grids is a lightweight Instagram app for Mac that lets you DM friends and do anything you usually do in your mobile app. Upload multiple photos and videos, add captions, locations, and emojis, search, post Stories directly from your Mac’s desktop, and more. In addition, Grids supports multiple profiles, so you can maintain both personal and business accounts just by switching a single toggle.
How to toggle mac app line. Avoid deleting messages with IM+
Bring all messengers into one and forget about digging into separate apps. IM+ is a handy utility that safely unites all your chats.
IM+ is the dream for those who need to use multiple messengers and social media, and simply can’t manage dozens of various apps at once. With IM+, you can add any messaging service you like, from Skype to Instagram to Slack, and then use all of them from one straightforward interface. What’s more, you can define notifications for work and personal accounts, use shortcuts to switch between services, and update your status with ease.
Best of all, ChatMate, Uplet, and IM+ are available to you right now absolutely free during the trial of Setapp, a rapidly growing platform with more than 180 popular Mac apps to cover any problem you might have. Start by keeping your iMessages private, get a few apps to manage your other accounts, and see the immediate difference at no cost!
Setapp lives on Mac and iOS. Please come back from another device.
Meantime, prepare for all the awesome things you can do with Setapp.
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When you’re hard at it working on your Mac, you don’t want to slow down – or have your computer slow you down – for any reason at all.
After all, you’re in the zone, and you expect your Mac to respond to every command with no delay.
Unfortunately, that’s not always the case.
Without you even realizing it, the amount of storage on your computer begins to dwindle as applications and related data take up additional valuable space.
You download a program here to try out and download another game there to see if you like it, and suddenly, your system’s performance can be compromised.
And, to add insult to injury, you don’t want to be forced to reboot your Mac after deleting an app to free up memory when you’re ready to move forward with the project at hand.
We’ll go over the different ways below to delete apps with the least amount of hassle so you can get back to what you do best: conquering the world with your Mac.
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How To Delete Apps On Mac The Easy Way
Apple makes it easy for even computer novices to delete apps, and there are a couple of ways to do this using either Launchpad or Finder.
To delete apps you’ve downloaded via Launchpad:
1. Select the Launchpad icon in the Dock.
2. Position the mouse cursor over the app you want to delete.
3. Press and hold the mouse until all the app icons begin to shake.
4. Select the X in a circle on the app you want to delete. Garageband mac app store price.
If you want to reinstall a deleted app later, all you need to do is go back to the App Store to download and install it again. Happily, even if you’ve paid for an app you eventually delete, you will not have to buy it again.
Use Finder to delete other apps you’ve installed from, for example, CDs:
1. In the Finder sidebar, select Applications.
2. For apps in folders, look for an App Uninstaller or Uninstall App file.
3. If you see one of these options, double-click the file.
4. Follow the uninstall instructions.
5. If the app does not have an uninstall option or isn’t even in a folder, drag it
to Trash, located at the end of the Dock.
6. Then, select Finder.
7. Select EmptyTrash.
In theory, some apps like Safari can’t be deleted because they are bundled with the Mac OS. If you do try to delete these apps, you’ll receive a message saying the app can’t be deleted because it’s required by the Mac OS.
There is a workaround to allow you to delete default apps which we’ll discuss below. It’s only for experienced users, however, who have good reasons to be deleting the apps built into the Mac OS.
Nine times out of ten, deleting apps via Launchpad or Finder will be more than sufficient. You may be determined, however, to be rid of every remnant of an application. If you’re sure you want to do this, the labor-intensive process is to manually go through different folders on your hard drive to remove an app’s associated files. You should be able to identify these leftover files because the app name will be in the file name.
The seven folders you need to double check are:
/Applications/ (app binary and dock icons)
~/Library/Saved Application State/ (app saved states)
~/Library/Application Support/CrashReporter/ (app crash reports)
/Library/Caches/ and ~/Library/Caches (app support caches)
~/Library/Address Book Plug-Ins/ (app plugins)
~/Library/Preferences/ (app preferences)
~/Library/ (app library)
To paraphrase an old saying: Think twice and delete once.
That is, if you’re not sure you should delete a file, don’t!
Inadvertently deleting the wrong file can drastically decrease system performance or, in the worst-case scenario, force you to reinstall the Mac OS.
There is another option to remove apps and related files: Download an automatic app uninstaller from the App Store. One we like, in particular, is the free App Cleaner which has a 4.8/5 App Store rating.
The main features of App Cleaner include the ability to calculate the actual amount of disk space used by apps, preview install applications and extensions, and preview all startup programs like system daemons, launch agents, and login items.
After you see how much memory is being used at various points in your system, you can disable apps from launching during Mac OS startup.
Plus, you can more easily remove app leftovers as opposed to doing it manually as discussed above.
App Cleaner maximizes system performance by deleting hidden files, removing temporary files, and resetting apps to their first-run state. You can preview widgets and remove the remains of bad service files.
In addition, with the paid Pro version, you can remove unneeded system extensions and banner ads. Plus, you can uninstall apps or delete only their executable files.
Once again, you want to make sure you’re confident about everything you’re deleting so you don’t end up causing more problems than you solve.
Using a program like App Cleaner, however, should keep you from accidentally deleting critical files. That’s something which can more easily happen when manually deleting files as per the instructions above or removing defaults apps as discussed below.
Although we don’t normally recommend it – and especially not for inexperienced users – it is possible to delete apps such as iTunes, Safari, and other built-in Mac OS software.
If you’re positive you want to do this, however, perform a system backup first in case things go wrong. While you can download Safari or iTunes from the App Store, not all default applications are available there.
How To Delete Apps Apple
First, you must disable the Apple System Integrity Protection (SIP) system:
1. Restart your Mac.
2. While the reboot is in progress, select Command + R. You will see the
recovery mode startup window.
3. In the Menu bar, select Utilities.
4. Select Terminal. Security hacking news.
5. In the Terminal window, type csrutil disable.
6. Press Return. Apple SIP is now disabled.
You will have to reboot your Mac again.
You can move on to the next step to remove default apps:
1. Relaunch Terminal during the reboot process.
2. As long as you are logged in with administrator privileges, type the
command cd /Applications/.
3. Press Return.
4. Now you can delete default applications by entering the following
commands:
One word of caution: There is no confirmation step when deleting these apps, so once you hit Enter, they are gone for good.
Finally, you will need to re-enable Apple SIP so you don’t accidently delete any applications in the future:
1. Once again, reboot your Mac.
2. Use Command + R to reopen Terminal.
3. Enter the command csrutil enable.
4. Reboot your Mac one last time.
Removing default programs is a labor-intensive process which requires rebooting your Mac several times. This does, of course, bely the second half of this article’s title about deleting apps without having to restart your computer.
Upon occasion, nonetheless, you may have the desire to delete default apps you know you’re not going to use. For example, if you’re overclocking your Mac, you may need every bit of possible memory so an extra 500 megs here and another 250 megs there really does add up.
But we can’t emphasize this enough – be careful and be prepared for unintended consequences which may result in having to reinstall your Mac OS.
Depending on additional types of circumstances, you won’t always be able to delete an app without having to reboot your Mac. This includes when you need to do a clean removal and reinstallation of software.
For example, you may be running QuickBooks when it becomes corrupted or otherwise damaged. Sure, the first thing you’ll do is reinstall it to try to solve the problems by overwriting the damaged files.
That won’t, however, always work.
In that case, you’ll need to uninstall QuickBooks and delete the PLIST files in the User and System folders. After that, you’ll have to reboot your Mac before reinstalling QuickBooks to make sure you have a 100% clean installation.
Want to learn more about how to delete apps on Mac and other workarounds? One good place to start is CNET’s Mac OS forum. At any given time, there are around six thousand discussions taking place on topics ranging from recovering a deleted javaAppletPlugin.plugin to suggestions for emulators.
How To Remove Message App From Macbook Pro
Remember: Being part of the Mac community doesn’t mean just finding answers to your own questions, it also entails offering your help and expertise to other users.
How To Remove Message App On Mac
Need to have the most storage space possible on your Mac’s hard drive? We’ve identified five techniques to remove unwanted and unnecessary files.