I had to look in the Frameworks folder on my mac (/Library/Frameworks/
) to uninstall a program. But now that I’m looking further in the folder, I see some programs that I once installed, but deleted after some time for some reasons.
I am wondering if I can delete the frameworks of these programs as I do not want to reinstall these programs on this mac anymore.
I was reading that frameworks are “a hierarchical directory that encapsulates shared resources” as I was reading on the Apple site. Because I do not know anything about this stuff I do not just want to delete something.
So, my question, is it safe to delete frameworks from unused and uninstalled programs without getting problems with other programs or the computer itself?
Best Answer
If nothing is using them, yes
The
.framework
files in/Library/Frameworks/
are indeed files that are intended to be shared. For instance, I currently haveMono.framework
in my folder, which would be used by all apps built with Mono.You will not have any problems with macOS if you remove these files, since it has its own frameworks folder in
/System/Library/Frameworks
(and you shouldn't remove those). So the only risk with removing these files is if an app or service requests it.Unfortunately, there isn't a good way to find out what apps require what sort of frameworks, so you'll have to use an educated guess. The strategies I can recommend are:
HPSmartPrint.framework
, which I'm quite sure is for HP printers. I have not owned an HP printer in about eight years, so I'm pretty confident that it's not being used.Library/Frameworks
folder.Of course, if you do remove a framework that is required by something you use, reinstalling that app should add it back to your computer.