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I'm a beginner with Mac OS X. Would somebody please tell me how to fully uninstall Firefox using Terminal on Mac OS X Lion?

I'm experiencing hangs and crashes with Firefox 5.0.1, so I want to remove it then re-install it.

Thanks so much in advance.

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3 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

To remove Firefox.app:

  • Login with an administrator account
  • sudo rm -rf /Applications/Firefox.app/

You get the same result by just dragging the Firefox app from /Applications/ to the trash.

If the crashes continue after reinstalling, deleting preferences and support files in the user library may help:

  • ~/Library/Preferences/org.mozilla.firefox*
  • ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox
  • ~/Library/Application Support/Mozilla
  • ~/Library/Mozilla
  • ~/Library/Caches/Firefox
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please can you list me those files when you get back home – JAHelia Nov 30 '11 at 11:44
1  
@JAHelia, you could use a program like AppCleaner to do the search & deletion for you. – koiyu Nov 30 '11 at 13:34
thank you so much patrix for your help. – JAHelia Dec 3 '11 at 5:43
up vote 2 down vote

It's very probable that your profile is corrupt, rather than Firefox itself (in which case, deleting Firefox won't help as any new installation will use the corrupt profile).

Creating a new profile may help - the safest way to do that is using the Profile Manager.

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up vote 1 down vote

You might also consider uninstalling it using AppZapper, which will remove the app and all of its configuration files. There is a fully-functional free trial available.

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