Hello everyone, I got a Macbook air 3 days ago. I wanted to listen to Pandora so I downloaded adobe flash player. I decided to just stick with iTunes radio and I wanted to uninstall adobe flash player. I downloaded Appdelete and deleted it off the Mac with that, or so I thought. Well, anyway, the setting for flash player is now showing up in system preferences. Th option for flash player wasn't there before, and now it's there. Can someone please explain how to make sure the app is fully gone from my Mac and how to get the flash player option to disappear from system preferences? Thanks.
Sarah
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RE: Need help uninstalling adobe flash player from macbook air.
Firstly, it is very important to understand what I am about to explain because it will explain why you did it very incorrectly. I will not explain the differences between app bundles and packages but just know this. When Adobe products are installed, files called receipts are placed in subdirectories normally hidden from the user. Receipts are installed because things called packages are also installed and receipts are required to track them for purposes such as uninstallation. To uninstall an app is NOT the same as to uninstall a package. To uninstall a package completely and correctly, you must use a tool like UninstallPKG developed by Corecode [corecode.at/uninstallpkg]. It is relatively easy to use and considering the first three uninstallation are free you have nothing to lose except what you do not want.
Secondly, I highly suggest to reinstall Adobe Flash Player because it is likely something will go wrong when you attempt to uninstall parts and pieces of a package that remain. Reinstall it then use UninstallPKG to uninstall everything that contains the word Adobe [there is a search field]. If you do not find anything, remove all the items in both tables located in the preferences window despite the repeated warning dialogues. Uninstall with great caution afterwards. I use it from time to time without issue.
How do I get this app?
Where do I go to get this app?
Adobe has their own remover
Adobe actually has their own uninstaller which works fine. The issue with a lot of applications is that they tend to put files in various directories, like Adobe does. You can go and track down bundles in various directories, but it might take you a while. Bundles can be a lot of content.
The reason that your Mac is showing Flash Player in System preferences is due to a file in /Library/preference panes called Flash Player.prefPane. There are a lot of aspects to an application, aside from the .app package, even more so because they put files in various directories for you to find once you try to remove something. This is one of these. That is why a lot of people have a lot of leftover junk from applications they no longer have installed, but they are simply leftover components.
However, if you do want to get rid of Flash Player, you can follow
<a href="https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/uninstall-flash-player-mac-os.html" target="_blank">this uninstallation guide here</a>
but be sure to follow all the steps. This will also help you to verify that Flash Player is completely removed.
I personally use
<a href="http://macpaw.com/cleanmymac" target="_blank">CleanMyMac 3</a>
to do this. It is a little pricy, although it is well worth it when it comes to all the cleaning modules and other utilities it contains.
It is generally hard to avoid junk cluttering up on your system from various applications you've removed by tossing them in the trash unfortunately, which is where this application comes in. This application scans in realtime and if you remove an application which has leftover components, it will prompt you as to whether you wish to remove the files now or later.
I hope this helps. Due note that you may want to stick with Flash Player though, since a lot of sites still use it.