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I'm having trouble removing the Finder icon from the application switcher in El Capitan. The guides seem to be all from 2012 - I get permissions errors (even using sudo) when I try to update Info.plist.

Is there a way to edit /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Info.plist, or a completely different way to remove the Finder that I'm unaware of?

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The file is protected by System Integrity Protection as outlined here.

By disabling SIP you will be able to edit the info.plist again.

So boot to Recovery Mode by pressing cmdR while booting.

  • Open Terminal.app (menubar -> Utilites -> Terminal)
  • Enter csrutil disable
  • Reboot your Mac
  • Edit the file /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Info.plist
  • Reboot again to Recovery Mode and enable SIP again: csrutil enable
  • Reboot your Mac

You should also be able to edit the file directly after booting to Recovery Mode without disabling SIP:

/Volumes/name_of_main_volume/usr/bin/nano /Volumes/name_of_main_volume/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Info.plist

You may have codesign Finder.app afterwards:

sudo codesign -fs - /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/
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