Disk Drill is Mac application used for recovering deleted files on your disk. A friend of mine installed this application on my MacBook running macOS High Sierra. Personally, for me, the app was buggy and didn’t quite live up to the promises.

So I decided to uninstall it, but soon realized it was not possible. Though according to the instructions given by the app’s developer. You are supposed to first launch the app, go to its Preferences window > General tab > Remove Disk Drill > confirm the action by clicking on Confirm Disk Drill removal.

Like I said, for me the app was buggy and at no time could I launch it to get to the UI above. So I decided to take a more geeky route.

How to uninstall Disk Drill manually

From a small research, I did online, I discovered users that followed the first route prescribed by the Disk Drill developers still had some service files stored on their systems. Yet, the developer promises the method mentioned above will remove the application completely from your computer. That is not the case.

The second route, though a bit technical for some users, is a sure way to remove an application entirely from your system. You first have to quit the application, click on its icon on the menu bar and choose the option of temporarily quitting the app.

Now click on Finder on the Dock and go to Application folder > click and drag Disk Drill.app to the Trash.

With Finder still open, click on the menu bar and click on Go > Go to Folder and the window below will appear. Type in ~/Library and hit Enter key on your keyboard.

This action will take you to the user’s Library folder, where you will search for and delete all the unnecessary service files for Disk Drill. Yes, they will still be there if the first option above worked for you. The developer of the app has named the folder as Cleverfiles. Check on the following subfolders:

~/Library/Application Support/Disk Drill

The process is more or less the same for the following sub-folders:

~/Library/Caches/com.cleverfiles.Disk_Drill

~/Library/Caches/com.cleverfiles.SmartDaemon

~/Library/Logs/DiskDrill.log

~/Library/Preferences/com.cleverfiles.Disk_Drill.plist

~/Library/Saved Application State/com.cleverfiles.Disk_Drill.savedState

After deleting all the above sub-folders, go to the Trash and empty it to make sure they are completely gone.

Disclaimer

Going into user’ files in any operating system comes with its fair share of risk especially in the hands of someone who does not fully understand the internal workings of an OS. That means there are risks of you deleting files needed by other programs on your system and the OS itself.

Neither Innov8tiv nor the author will bare any responsibilities in the event you any files that would lead to either your OS or other applications not working properly. You can take this article as a view-but-not-touch learning experience.