Uninstalling Evernote (Mac)
I’m documenting my uninstall steps for Evernote build 62233 on OS X Snow Leopard.
I tried Evernote for a week. Despite the decent user experience, the system didn’t catch on, so I wanted to remove it. Turns out that it doesn’t have an uninstaller, not even a command-line uninstall script. Neither the support website nor the online documentation has any information about uninstalling. Deleting the application itself does not remove everything. I still found right-click menus in Safari, and entries for Evernote in Growl notifications. Thus, I’m sharing what I did to clean this up. This is what worked for me. I make no guarantees for you.
- Quit the app up in the menu bar
- Deleted the application from the Applications folder
- Rebooted
- Deleted all of the following in the order listed (and made sure Safari wasn’t running):
./Library/Internet Plug-Ins/EvernoteSafariClipperPlugin.webplugin/Contents/MacOS/EvernoteSafariClipperPlugin
./Library/Internet Plug-Ins/EvernoteSafariClipperPlugin.webplugin
./Library/Application Support/Growl/Tickets/Evernote.growlTicket
./Library/Application Support/Evernote/data/<12345>/Evernote.sql
./Library/Application Support/Evernote
Update: some dude from Evernote left a comment about one more file that needs removing. Thanks, Andrew!
Update #2: Thomas Reggi pointed out that “Evernote Helper” still lingers in your login items.
This got me thinking about what else could possibly be lingering, well over a year after I did my “uninstall.” So, I checked defaults:
defaults read com.evernote.Evernote | grep -i evernote
shows:
"com.evernote.Evernote" = { ENIncomingEmail = "[email protected]"; SUFeedURL = "http://update.evernote.com/public/ENMac/EvernoteMacUpdate.xml"; }
To clear this out, I had to do this:
defaults delete com.evernote.Evernote
Comments (imported from the old blog):
Nov 14, 2009:
Andrew McGeachie said…
You’ll also want to delete:
./Library/Caches/Metadata/com.evernote.Evernote
which contains the spotlight metadata.
Jan 31, 2010:
sarag925 said…
wait, is this deleted from terminal?
Robert Otani said…
@sarag925: yes, use Terminal.
Feb 26, 2010
Peter Blomqvist said…
Hi,
Silly question:
Does it matter in which order you delete the items? For example, shouldn’t you delete Evernote.sql before you delete Evernote? How does it work?
Best regards,
Peter (Confused amateur)
Feb 26, 2010
Robert Otani said…
Peter: thanks for asking, I updated my post to show the order that I deleted the files.
Feb 26, 2010
Peter Blomqvist said…
Hi,
Silly question:
Does it matter in which order you delete the items? For example, shouldn’t you delete Evernote.sql before you delete Evernote? How does it work?
Best regards,
Peter (Confused amateur)
Feb 26, 2010
Robert Otani said…
Peter: thanks for asking, I updated my post to show the order that I deleted the files.
Jun 12, 2010
Thinkingman.com said…
Not to start a flame war, but I tried Evernote and wasn’t impressed. While the OCR worked a bit better than the average, it wasn’t enough value for their monthly fee, which for my notes was going to be upwards of $80/month. On top of that, I had a heck of a time trying to uninstall that darned software; I couldn’t find instructions anywhere, and for some reason my previous searches for Evernote items didn’t include some of the files above. Mahalo for the pointers and in helping us get on the right track with this.
Jun 18, 2010
Uninstall Program said…
Your article should help many people in trouble.
Jun 28, 2010
Bill Westerman said…
Thanks, man, worked like a charm.
Jun 30, 2010
Michele said…
I’m using Evernote_83438.dmg with Snow Leopard 10.6.4 and still stuck uninstalling Evernote. Whenever I start Evernote it crashes during the Thumbnail Generation. It continually tries to pull up my old notes. One of the notes must have corruption as it always fails on the same note. I’ve removed all notebooks from another machine. When I login Evernote at the website my data is clean on the website. Something is stilled cached on my mac because even though I have tried to remove every bit of Evernote that I can find via Finder & in Terminal, the new installation still tries to pull up my old notes.
Jul 31, 2010
Ari said…
Thank you!
Aug 25, 2010
Pspiliotis said
You can always use an app like AppCleaner or CleanApp or something similar. It’s a lot easier
Sep 15, 2010
petruc said
Thank you guys for the help.
There’s, though, a menu entry on the “Print” window’s “PDF” button, “Save PDF to Evernote”, which is not contemplated by the step-by-step guide. Just select “Edit menu…” right from the menu itself and you’ll be able to remove it.
Sep 22, 2010
Uninstall Evernote » frEdSCAPEs 3.0 said
[…] Ik heb dit niet zelf bedacht. Ik vond deze info op ~ Uninstalling Evernote (Mac) |Ontanistudio.com […]
Nov 16, 2010
kontikitu said
I am the world’s most enthusiastic Evernote fan and no, I don’t work for them. You might try it again as it’s improved quite a bit including PDF support even for free users.
You might also consider downloading a free little jewel called AppCleaner which totally makes up for Mac’s poor uninstall protocol. http://www.freemacsoft.net/AppCleaner/
@Thingkingman - The most Evernote charges for unlimited “pro” account is about $45 per year. The least they charge for the account I use (no video support) is zero $.
Jan 02, 2011
Onassis said
Thanks for this tip. I actually like Evernote very much, but I find that I don’t use the desktop app much. The web based app is just as functional and I find that when I do need to take notes I am usually at a place with internet access. And I like having a clean Application bar. There are way too many apps running in the background and I don’t like it. It’s a new year and I’m cleaning up. :)
