by I currently have 287 apps on my Mac and dozens on my iPhone and iPad. But when I look closely, I must admit I haven’t used a number of them in a while; in fact, I don’t even remember what some are supposed to do. If you’re like me, you know you could keep this collection of apps going forever, but if you’re tight on storage space, or if you just want to tidy up your Applications folder, your iTunes library, and your iOS device’s home screens, the time for a purge may be now. Here are some tips for finding and deleting apps you rarely use.
Root out unused apps on your Mac
My first rule of thumb, when cleaning my Mac, is to delete apps if I don’t know what they do. That’s generally a sign I haven’t used them in a long time. (Make sure, before you delete any apps, that you have a backup or that you can re-download them. While this is the case for most apps, some may be older versions that are no longer available.)
In List view, you can see when you last opened your applications … and toss those you haven’t touched in over a year.
If you want to see the last time you opened your applications, go to the Applications folder in the Finder, and switch to List view (if you’re not already using that view) by either choosing View > As List, or pressing Command-2. You’ll see columns showing the name of each app, the date it was last modified, and the size. But there’s another useful column you can add to this view. Press Command-J and select Date Last Opened. When you do this, a Last Opened column appears. Click that column header to sort by date; the most recently opened apps will come to the top of the list. Click again to change the sort order so that the oldest dates appear first.
You may be surprised when you do this; I know I was when writing this article. I have apps on my Mac that I haven’t opened since 2006, but that I keep around “just in case.” Needless to say, these apps probably haven’t been updated since then—in fact, when you update an app via the Mac App Store, its last-opened date will change to the current date.
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