Want to Clean Up After Your Applications?  Check Out AppZapper!

February 23rd, 2009 at 10:20 AM - Columns and Opinions by John F. Braun

Product Link : AppZapper 1.8.0 ($12.95 Shareware)

Mac OS X does a fine job of hiding the complexity of an application so that it appears as a single item to the user. To see what is inside of an application file, you can Control-click and choose "Show Package Contents" to get an idea of the contents. You'd think that if you want to remove all traces of an application from your system, you just toss it in the Trash. Unfortunately, this is seldom the case. Applications often install other tidbits which will clutter your system if they're not removed along with the application. Fortunately, AppZapper is smart enough to locate all of these items, and help you discard them in a single action.

AppZapper Finds All the Pieces of an Application

Just take an application and drag it over the AppZapper windows. In a few moments, you will see a list of all of the pieces of the application that AppZapper found. Some of the items that are identified include plist/preference files, application support files, cache files, installation receipts, and more. Once you've reviewed the items to remove, just click on the Zap button to get rid of it all. You are permitted five test zaps before you need to pay for a registration code.

AppZapper also has handy shortcuts where you can quickly remove preference panes, widgets, plugins and screen savers. If there are applications that you don't want zapped, you can define them as a safe application. You can also ask to keep default applications, such as iPhoto and iTunes, safe. You can also ask that running applications can't get zapped. Finally, you can enable or disable cool zapping sound effects. New in version 1.8 is the ability to un-zap a recently zapped application.

So make sure to keep your Mac free from application clutter, and check out AppZapper today. Have any other applications that help keep your Mac clean? Send an email to John, and he'll give it a try.

John is a software engineer who works in the corporate R&D group of a Fortune 500 company, focusing on imaging and printing technologies. He has AS, BS and MS degrees in various computing disciplines, so his friends and colleagues are somewhat surprised that he’s a Mac enthusiast.  After spending the day developing in an environment comprised largely of PCs, and watching colleagues wrestle with the horror that is Windows, he’s glad to come home to a MacBook Pro and PowerMac G5 at the end of the day.