MacOS – Uninstalling NTFS-3G and MacFUSE after upgrading from Yosemite to El Capitan

There are several programs that provide NTFS support. However, I would hesitate to claim that any of these programs can provide 100% compatibility and support.

Here's a subset of the NTFS list in Richard Austin's Blog Champion's discussion of OS X file system choices:

• Tuxera - I've used this program with no issues in Lion and Mountain Lion
• Paragon - site claims to support Mountain Lion, personally haven't used
• OSX Fuse - a freeware successor, don't know if it works with Mountain Lion, personally haven't used

I don't have a retina MBP to test with, but any of these should offer you a good starting point. Since you've already tried Tuxera, Paragon appears to be your best bet, while OSX Fuse would be a good option to try out.

I found uninstallation instructions for MacFUSE in this blog post. They worked for me with a little tweaking.

First, find the uninstall script that comes with MacFUSE. For the blog post author, it was /Library/Filesystems/fuse.fs, and for me, it was /Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Support/uninstall-macfuse-core.sh.

If you try running the script, it will give the following error:

MacFUSE Uninstaller: Can not find the Archive.bom for MacFUSE Core package.

To fix this, you need to edit a case statement inside the script, so that it is able to match your version of OS X. Open the script with sudo nano uninstall-macfuse-core.sh. (I needed sudo to be able to save my changes to the file. And you can use vim instead of nano if you like.) Then search the code for uname to get to this section:

OS_RELEASE=`/usr/bin/uname -r`
case "$OS_RELEASE" in
  8*)
    log "Incorrect uninstall. Use the Tiger version please."
    exit 1
    ;;
  9*)
    PACKAGE_RECEIPT="$INSTALL_VOLUME/Library/Receipts/MacFUSE Core.pkg"
    OUTER_PACKAGE_RECEIPT="$INSTALL_VOLUME/Library/Receipts/MacFUSE.pkg"
    BOMFILE="$PACKAGE_RECEIPT/Contents/Archive.bom"
    ;;
  10*)
     PACKAGE_RECEIPT=""
     BOMFILE="$INSTALL_VOLUME/var/db/receipts/com.google.macfuse.core.bom"
     ;;
esac

The case that you want run is the one for 10*.

First, confirm that there is indeed a file at /var/db/receipts/com.google.macfuse.core.bom. The file was there for me, but for the blog post author it was in /Library/Receipts/boms/com.google.macfuse.core.bom instead – if this is the case, change the path in the script.

The reason the case currently isn’t running is because /usr/bin/uname -r doesn’t start with any of those numbers – it’s “13.4.0” for me. So change this line of the case statement:

  10*)

to this, which matches versions 10 through 19:

  1[0-9]*)

Save the file and exit your editor. Now run the uninstall script and it should work this time. It prints output along these lines:

MacFUSE Uninstaller: Sudoing...
MacFUSE Uninstaller: Removing file: '//./Library/Application Support/Developer/Shared/Xcode/Project Templates/MacFUSE'
MacFUSE Uninstaller: Removing file: '//./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Contents/Info.plist'
MacFUSE Uninstaller: Removing file: '//./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/InfoPlist.strings'
MacFUSE Uninstaller: Removing file: '//./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Contents/version.plist'
MacFUSE Uninstaller: Removing file: '//./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Support/autoinstall-macfuse-core'
MacFUSE Uninstaller: Removing file: '//./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Support/fusefs.kext/Contents/Info.plist'
MacFUSE Uninstaller: Removing file: '//./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Support/fusefs.kext/Contents/MacOS/fusefs'
MacFUSE Uninstaller: Removing file: '//./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Support/load_fusefs'
MacFUSE Uninstaller: Removing file: '//./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Support/mount_fusefs'
MacFUSE Uninstaller: Removing file: '//./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Support/uninstall-macfuse-core.sh'
MacFUSE Uninstaller: Removing file: '//./Library/Frameworks/MacFUSE.framework/Headers'
MacFUSE Uninstaller: Removing file: '//./Library/Frameworks/MacFUSE.framework/MacFUSE'
MacFUSE Uninstaller: Removing file: '//./Library/Frameworks/MacFUSE.framework/Resources'
MacFUSE Uninstaller: Removing file: '//./Library/Frameworks/MacFUSE.framework/Versions/A/Headers/GMAppleDouble.h'
…
MacFUSE Uninstaller: Removing dir: '//./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Contents/Resources/English.lproj'
MacFUSE Uninstaller: Removing dir: '//./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Contents/Resources'
MacFUSE Uninstaller: Removing dir: '//./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Contents'
MacFUSE Uninstaller: Removing dir: '//./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs'
MacFUSE Uninstaller: Ignoring dir: '//./Library/Filesystems'
MacFUSE Uninstaller: Ignoring dir: '//./Library/Application Support/Developer/Shared/Xcode/Project Templates'
MacFUSE Uninstaller: Ignoring dir: '//./Library/Application Support/Developer/Shared/Xcode'
MacFUSE Uninstaller: Ignoring dir: '//./Library/Application Support/Developer/Shared'
MacFUSE Uninstaller: Ignoring dir: '//./Library/Application Support/Developer'
MacFUSE Uninstaller: Ignoring dir: '//./Library/Application Support'
MacFUSE Uninstaller: Ignoring dir: '//./Library'
MacFUSE Uninstaller: Ignoring dir: '//.'

The last step is to remove the MacFUSE preference pane. Just launch System Preferences, right-click on the preference pane, and choose the menu item ‘Remove “MacFuse” Preference Pane’.