Safari is a default Apple browser for macOS and iOS systems. Although Safari is a fast web browser, you may prefer using another browser, for example, Google Chrome. If you do not use it at all, you may want to uninstall Safari since it is just taking up useless disk space. In this article, we will show you how to delete Safari on Mac.
Contents:
- Can you uninstall Safari?
- How to remove Safari from Mac with Terminal
- How to uninstall Safari extensions
- How to reset Safari
Important notes about uninstalling Safari on Mac
- Generally, you don’t need to uninstall Safari from your Mac. If you don’t use it, it doesn’t accumulate caches or other service files and as a result, it doesn’t take up much space on your drive.
- If you uninstall Safari, it can be restored when you update or upgrade your macOS. Moreover, on some systems, Safari can be restored after enabling SIP.
- Uninstalling the default applications like Safari from a Mac can damage your system. You should remove them only if you understand the macOS file system and ensure that it will not affect your Mac badly.
- If you want to uninstall Safari just because you need more free space on your Mac, read our article “How to clean up a Mac.” There are some more effective ways to recover space on your drive.
- This guide doesn’t work for macOS Monterey and Ventura. Since macOS the version 12, Apple doesn’t allow to uninstall Safari even when SIP is disabled. On the newest versions of macOS, the default Apple applications, including Safari, are located on a protected area of the disk even when you turn off SIP.
Can you uninstall Safari?
When you try to remove Safari to Trash, you will receive this message from macOS: “Safari app can’t be modified or deleted because it’s required by macOS.”
Why does this happen?
The fact is, according to Apple System Integrity Protection (SIP), you are unable to modify pre-installed applications and some system folders on Macs. This inability to remove such items in the standard way is envisaged by Apple to be a safeguard against inexperienced users accidentally damaging the viability of the system. This is very important because, even if Safari can always be restored by downloading from the App Store, with other applications it’s a little more complicated. However, there is a way to delete Safari on Mac using the Terminal command line. For this, you need to disable the System Integrity Protection.
How to remove Safari from Mac with Terminal
Before providing the steps to uninstall Safari on Mac, once again we would like to remind you that, if you’re not a computer geek and are not exactly sure what to do, we strongly advise you not to delete Safari. By uninstalling the browser, you will save not more than 150 megabytes, which hardly justifies deleting it.
However, if you are certain you want to remove Safari from Mac, read on. Please note that all actions for removing embedded programs are completely at your own risk.
Before removing Safri, you should disable SIP – System Integrity Protection
Part 1. Disable Mac System Integrity Protection
- Restart your Mac holding the Command+R keyboard shortcut while the reboot is in progress.
- Your Mac will show you are in the recovery mode.
- Go to the Menu bar, click on Utilities and select Terminal.
- Paste in Terminal window this command: csrutil disable
- Click the Return (Enter) key. This will disable your SIP.
- Restart your Mac.
- Login to your system using your admin account.
That’s it! Now you have System Integrity Protection disabled, and now you can remove the Safari browser app. For the next steps you need to have administrator rights.
Part 2. Remove Safari from Mac
- Launch the Terminal program from Launchpad again.
- Enter the following command: sudo mount -uw /System/Applications
- Click the Enter key.
- Enter your password when asked.
- Now you have mounted the /System/Applications folder to have Read & Write permission.
- Type the command cd /Applications/
- Click the Enter key. The applications’ directory will be shown.
- Enter one of the following commands to remove Safari:
- On macOS 10.14: sudo rm -rf Safari.app/
- On macOS 10.15: sudo rm -rf ~/mount/Applications/Safari.app
- Click the Enter key.
Please be careful: when you remove items via Terminal, the system does not ask for confirmation.
After you have removed Safari, don’t forget to enable back the SIP. For this, again restart your Mac in a recovery mode (press Command+R while rebooting), and enter the csrutil enable command into Terminal.
* Also read our previous article How to uninstall default Apple apps.
How to uninstall Safari extensions
In case you want to uninstall Safari just because the browser is very slow, don’t rush to get rid of Safari. Usually, extensions slow down your browser. So first we recommend that you uninstall Safari extensions.
Here is how to uninstall Safari extensions on Mac:
- Open the Safari browser.
- Go to the Menu bar and click Safari → select Settings.
- Switch to the Extensions tab. Here you can take a look at all your extensions and click the Uninstall button to remove these extensions.
How to reset Safari
Once again, we would like to note that removing default Apple applications may damage the system. If you want to uninstall Safari due to browser issues and errors, we recommend that you just reset Safari. You can easily do this with a free software tool App Cleaner & Uninstaller.
- Launch App Cleaner & Uninstaller.
- Go to the app’s Preferences and enable displaying system applications.
- Press Command+R to rescan your apps and switch to Expert mode
- Find Safari in the list of apps and right-click on it → choose Select Service Files for Removal
- Click the Remove button and confirm the removal.
That’s all.
Thus, if you want to uninstall apps to free up more disk space, we recommend uninstalling only third-party applications and clearing their service files. Use App Cleaner & Uninstaller for these tasks.
App Cleaner & Uninstaller helps to completely remove apps, delete all their support files, find the leftovers of already removed apps, manage extensions, startup programs, and even change default apps you use to open different types of files.
