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I want to remove the News app from my computer. I tried to remove it myself:

dsenableroot
su - root
sudo rm -rf /Applications/News.app

"Operation not permitted"

It appears I no longer in control of my computer.

Can somebody help me pull this app out of my machine?

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    Why don't you just turn off the notifications for News? I've all notifications for that app turned off for months and I'm never bothered by alerts of any kind, like the one you experiences.
    – fsb
    Commented May 6, 2019 at 15:24
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    Failing that you could boot into recovery mode and turn off System Integrity Protection (SIP) with a csrutil disable. Reboot and delete the app. I would then boot into recovery mode and turn SIP back on with a csrutil enable. But what I would REALLY do and have done is just turn off notifications and ignore it. News is a small app and can be ignored.
    – Steve Chambers
    Commented May 6, 2019 at 15:44
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    News app is horrible and I want to remove it - that's why. I don't want the propaganda on my hardware thank you very much.
    – n13
    Commented Nov 14, 2020 at 5:34
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    On a MacBook running Big Sur 11.7.5 the News app is "using significant energy" and runs down the battery when the Mac is supposed to sleep. This is a very good reason to get rid of it. And yes, I have disabled its notifications. I don't use News, I didn't even know it existed until it showed up in the Battery dropdown.
    – András Aszódi
    Commented May 14, 2023 at 18:58

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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NOTE: At the time this question/answer was posted the then current release of macOS was macOS Mojave. Things have changed in macOS Catalina and later. Especially in macOS Big Sur and later, the Macintosh HD is a cryptographically signed read-only volume and these directions do not apply to it or later versions of macOS. Additional steps and directions requires for macOS Big Sur and later, however breaking the cryptographically signed read-only volume breaks FileVault and therefore will not be provided.

For macOS Mojave and earlier.

You do not need to disable System Integrity Protection (SIP).

To delete the News app, do the following:

  1. Backup News.app with via Time Machine or making a Zip archive.
  • For the Zip archive, right-click it and select: Compress "News"

  1. Shutdown your Mac.

  2. Boot to Recovery Mode. Press ⌘R when starting your Mac.

  3. Open Terminal from the Utilities menu.

  4. Run the following compound command adjusting Macintosh HD as necessary if you've modified the default name of the primary startup volume:

     rm -r "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Applications/News.app"; reboot

  5. After rebooting from Recovery Mode, if you still have the News icon on the Dock, right-click it and select: Options > Remove from Dock

Note that while this does remove the News.app, it may/will reappear when macOS is updated/upgraded and will need to be deleted again.

If after having done this and you want to restore the News app, then restore it using Time Machine, if you backed it up in that manner, or if you created the Zip archive, it would have been created in the /Applications folder, if you moved it elsewhere, move it back and then do the following:

  1. Shutdown your Mac.

  2. Boot to Recovery Mode. Press ⌘R when starting your Mac.

  3. Open Terminal from the Utilities menu.

  4. Run the following compound command adjusting Macintosh HD as necessary if you've modified the default name of the primary startup volume:

     cd "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Applications"; ../usr/bin/unzip News.zip; reboot
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    While the method posted above could be considered more secure, I recommend fully turning off SIP so you don't have to boot into Recovery Mode again after OS updates. You're still protected by the normal root permission system used by every Linux OS and macOS up through 10.10.
    – Wowfunhappy
    Commented May 6, 2019 at 15:49
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    I do not recommend turning off SIP indefinitely!
    – user3439894
    Commented May 6, 2019 at 15:50
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    One caveat to note: this is permanent. If you change your mind and decide you want the News app back, you will likely need to do a full reinstall. macOS updates will sometimes restore the app, but it will be a broken version you can't actually open (so you'll need to just delete it again.) If you're okay with that, I never experience ill effects from removing default apps, and have been doing it for the past decade...
    – Wowfunhappy
    Commented May 6, 2019 at 15:50
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    @Wowfunhappy, Assuming one has backed it up, either via Time Machine or creating a Zip archive, it can easily be restored without the need to reinstall the whole OS. Additionally, without a backup it can still be restored without having to reinstall the whole OS, although the steps necessary are much easier with having a backup then having to extract the app from the installer.
    – user3439894
    Commented May 6, 2019 at 17:02
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    Yeah, there's also Pacifist. I've just run into weird issues with doing that in the past. I suspect there's some permissions or attributes in play that don't always get restored.
    – Wowfunhappy
    Commented May 6, 2019 at 20:34
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Brief addendum to @user3439894's answer:

  • You might have to mount the volume first (after entering in recovery mode but before opening the terminal).
  • The news app may be located at /Volumes/Macintosh HD/System/Applications/News.app–note /System/–(Catalina 10.15.2).
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