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-2008 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 2009 takes up 1.16 GB of the 1.35 GB package. Luckily, TeX Live is installed in a single directory on the Mac; it is not scattered over several different places. TeX Live 2009 is entirely contained in /usr/local/texlive/2009; the old TeX Live 2008 was in /usr/local/texlive/2008.
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 commands, pushing the return key after each line.
The first command changes directory to the directory which contains TeX Live. The second line causes the Finder to list the contents of that directory, which will contain a folder named texmf-local and a folder for each installed version of TeX Live --- last year's folder is named 2008 and this year's folder is named 2009. Drag the folder containing the version of TeX Live you wish to uninstall to the trash. You will need to provide an administrative password when asked.
The folder texmf-local is available for local additions to TeX. These local additions are used by all versions of TeX Live, so if you added files for TeX Live 2008, they are still around for TeX Live 2009. 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 texmf-local by dragging it to the trash.
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 the TeX Distribution preference pane to the trash.
Incidentally, when you remove a TeX Distribution, say TeX Live 2008, 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-2009 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.