Is there any way to hide macOS built-in apps?

TidBITS Talk
1

I recently tried to get rid of some apps from showing up in Spotlight and realized that in modern macOS things have become quite a bit more complicated with the SSV when it comes to apps distributed together with macOS. You cannot change their name, so no adding a period to hide them. Also chflags hidden won’t work. And you certainly can’t delete or move them some place else.

So is there any way at all to just get rid of, or at least hide, built-in macOS apps from /Applications? I have ~150 apps in there and at least 15 of the I would delete at once because they to me are utterly useless whereas I like tidiness and minimalism, and I abhor clutter.

I guess I could create a curated Applications folder some place else and add 3rd party apps and aliases to Apple apps there, but that’s a) clunky and b) breaks nice shortcuts like shift-cmd-A. Plus, macOS more and more expects apps to live and be run form certain locations, so it’s doubtful that’s a sustainable path.

On iOS there is the option to essentially hide unused apps (relegating them to app listing only) and I realize that doesn’t simply map to the Mac file system at /Applications, but it sure would be nice to achieve a result similar enough to that situation where what I see in /Applications is only what I really care about and want to use without it being cluttered with a bunch of whizzbang junk Apple marketing wants to thrust down my throat.

1 Like
2

I would suggest launching apps through a different interface than the Finder.

You mention iOS. iOS’s “springboard” launcher is effectively the same as the macOS Launchpad. This is what I use. Either a gesture (on my laptop) or a hot-key (on my desktop) to show it. My apps there are organized into folders that I created. If you want to hide something, you can shove it into an “ignore” folder or just stick it on a page you don’t visit. (Sadly, there isn’t a “hide” option or an app-library page on the Launchpad - something I think Apple should add.)

If you don’t like Launchpad, another easy way is to create a folder containing aliases to the apps you like. I have such a “QuickList” folder, which I have placed on the Dock, for rapid access to certain key apps and documents. They’ll run just fine, because the app is still running from its installed location.

1 Like
3

Clutter, and wasted resources. I gave up and quit counting, but there a were a lot more than 15 last I did.

4

I tend to launch Apps from Launchbar or the Dock, and more and more just leave the everday use Apps open all the time so there’s little need to even do that.

Still, I agree with the wish to be able to delete Apple Apps I don’t use or want.