TWG | MacTeX | Donate | FAQ | Fonts | Help | References | Support | Acknowledgments | TUG
There are two reasons users want to uninstall. Some casual users see TeX on the web, download it to experiment, decide that the program is not their cup of tea, and want to get rid of it. Other users have MacTeX-2007 or another earlier distribution, upgrade to the latest version, and want to reclaim space by erasing the old distribution.
The Apple Installer does not support uninstalling files. However, it is fairly easy to remove most software installed by MacTeX.
The actual TeX distribution TeX Live is by far the largest piece of MacTeX. In compressed form, TeX Live 2008 takes up 1.02 GB of the 1.16 GB package. Luckily, TeX Live is installed in a single directory on the Mac; it is not scattered over several different places. TeX Live 2008 is entirely contained in /usr/local/texlive/2008; the old TeX Live 2007 was in /usr/local/texlive/2007.
The only difficulty is that TeX Live is owned by root and lives in a location that is not commonly visible in the Finder. Consequently it must be removed using the command line. To do so, run Apple's Terminal program, which is located in /Applications/Utilities. Then issue the following three commands, pushing the return key after each line. But before you do so, read the next two paragraphs because a mistake could be fatal!
The first command changes directory to the directory which contains TeX Live 2008. The second line lists the contents of that directory so you can check that you are in the correct directory. The directory will contain at least two folders: texmf-local and 2008. It might contain other folders, like 2007 or 2007basic. It should not contain many files or folders.
If all is well, then the third line does the dirty work. The first word, "sudo" causes the command to be run as root; you will have to provide an Administrator password when asked. The next words, "rm -R" asks that a folder be removed, and all of the contents of the folder be recursively removed. The final word, "2008", names the folder.
If you want to remove the old TeX Live 2007, just replace "2008" by "2007" in the third command.
The folder texmf-local is available for local additions to TeX which can be used by all users on a machine. This local additions are used by all versions of TeX Live, so if you added files for TeX Live 2007, they are still around for TeX Live 2008. When MacTeX is installed, it doesn't touch texmf-local if it already exists, but it creates an empty directory tree if none is present.
Consequently, if you are updating TeX Live to a new version, you want to leave texmf-local alone. But if you are trying to remove all traces of TeX, then remove it as before, replacing "2008" by "texmf-local".
This step is easy. The GUI applications are in /Applications/TeX. To uninstall, drag them to the trash. MacTeX also installs i-Installer in /Applications/Utilities. Drag it to the trash to uninstall.
This data structure takes very little space, so it makes little sense to erase it. But if you must, locate /Library in the Finder and drag the subfolder TeX to the trash. You will be asked to give an Administrator password. Warning: if you have other TeX distributions, they may have also installed files in /Library/TeX, so erasing this folder is then not a good idea.
The TeX Distribution preference pane is in /Library/PreferencePanes. Erase it by dragging to the trash in the same way.
Incidentally, when you remove a TeX Distribution, say TeX Live 2007, it is not necessary to remove its related links from the TeX Distribution Data structure. The software is smart enough to know that these links no longer point to live data.
This step is more difficult. One way to proceed is to open the MacTeX-2008 install package and select "Show Files" from the resulting "File" menu of Apple's installer. This will give a complete list is files installed, and their install locations. Find files related to Ghostscript and ImageMagick and remove them.
More details may be provided later for this last step!