Apple - Can I safely uninstall iTunes from my Mac?

In order to uninstall iTunes, you need to delete (drag to the Trash) a lot of items:

  • The application's icon.
  • /Home/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iTunes....plist (a lot of files) and drag them to the Trash.
  • Look in /Library/ folder for an iTunes folder and if you find one drag it to the Trash.
  • Look in /Home/Library/ folder for an iTunes folder and drag it to the Trash.
  • Last, in /Home/Library/Preferences/ByHost/ folder look for two files with names com.apple.nnnnnnn.plist and drag them to the Trash.

Open Activity Monitor (Utilities folder) and in the process list look for iTunesHelper. Select it, then click on Quit Process icon. Quit or Force Quit the process. Now open the Accounts preference pane, click on Login Items tab, look for the iTunesHelper entry and select it, then click the "-" button and remove it from the list.

Empty the Trash. This should fully remove iTunes and its associated files/folders.

You can find all the information on this page.

But, there is no harm in deleting iTunes, except other iLife apps (iMovie, iPhoto,...) won't be able to get music out of the iTunes library for compiling their things (movies, slideshows,...)

So I'm seriously wondering why you want to delete iTunes at all. My advice is to leave it as it is and just ignore it.
You won't do any harm by it if you just leave iTunes there.


If you don't use it, you are welcome to remove it. However consider that the ability to backup/install/upgrade etc over USB is going to be considerably faster than doing everything via iCloud. Particularly for a restore, using an iTunes backup will be much faster and get your device back in a single step, whereas using iCloud backups will perform a staged recovery, pulling back your options and settings etc, then pulling each app directly from the App Store, which will likely not only be very slow (certainly in comparison) but may also leave you with a large bandwidth hit if you are on a limited connection.

The idea of the over-the-air capabilities are to support people who do not have or wish to use a computer in order to be able to use their iOS device. It's just another option, but it shouldn't necessarily be seen as the only or the preferable option.

Frankly, for the space it takes up, I would consider leaving it installed, but you won't harm anything by removing it, and a re-install is simple enough should you change your mind.

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Macos

Itunes