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I needed to attend a Webex meeting and by going to the provided address I was given a file to download (Webex.pkg). After the installation of it, there was no respective application in the /Applications or ~/Applications folders. The Webex application only seems to start when an appropriate URL is accessed.

I now want to uninstall Webex as I no longer need it, but the app did not come with an uninstaller.

First, I took a look at Console for any log and found this wbxtra_20230113_111857_cws.log, which has these entries

[11:18:57.906] Version: 41.1.0, user: Alex, uid: 503, gid: 20, OSX: 13.1, home: /Users/Alex
[11:18:57.933] Who am I: Alex
[11:18:57.950] Script params:
$0 = /tmp/PKInstallSandbox.kVAiy6/Scripts/com.cisco.webex.meetings.cws.5ct0LG/postinstall 
$1 = /Users/Alex/Downloads/Webex.pkg 
$2 = /Users/Alex/Library/Application Support/WebEx Folder/Add-ons 
$3 = /
[11:18:57.964] pkg_path: /Users/Alex/Downloads/Webex.pkg
[11:18:58.036] Remove arm64 payloads done: 0
[11:18:58.048] device arch: arm64
[11:18:58.060] cws_path: /Users/Alex/Library/Application Support/WebEx Folder/Add-ons/Cisco WebEx Start.app
/Users/Alex/Library/Application Support/WebEx Folder/Add-ons/Cisco WebEx Start.app: valid on disk
/Users/Alex/Library/Application Support/WebEx Folder/Add-ons/Cisco WebEx Start.app: satisfies its Designated Requirement
[11:18:58.274] Verify target done.
[11:18:58.283] 
[11:18:58.293] 
[11:18:58.721] Launch target done. open times: 1
[11:18:58.775] Installation done, result: 0 (expect: 0)

So it seemed that I only needed to remove ~/Library/Application Support/WebEx Folder/, but when I did a search (sudo find /Users -iname "*webex*" 2>&1 | grep -v "Operation not permitted") across the whole Users directory, I came across these instances with the name "Webex", which seem to point to the software in other places as well:

/Users/Alex/Library/Receipts/com.cisco.webex.meetings.cws.bom
/Users/Alex/Library/Application Support/Mozilla/NativeMessagingHosts/com.webex.meeting.json
/Users/Alex/Library/Application Support/Microsoft Edge Beta/NativeMessagingHosts/com.webex.meeting.json
/Users/Alex/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/NativeMessagingHosts/com.webex.meeting.json
/Users/Alex/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome Canary/NativeMessagingHosts/com.webex.meeting.json
/Users/Alex/Library/Application Support/Cisco/WebEx Meetings
/Users/Alex/Library/Application Support/Cisco/WebEx Meetings/Updates/WebexTeams.dmg
/Users/Alex/Library/Application Support/Webex Meetings
/Users/Alex/Library/Application Support/Microsoft Edge/NativeMessagingHosts/com.webex.meeting.json

/Users/Alex/Library/Application Support/WebEx Folder  ⬅︎ several files and folders hereunder

/Users/Alex/Library/Saved Application State/com.webex.meetingmanager.savedState
/Users/Alex/Library/WebKit/com.webex.meetingmanager
/Users/Alex/Library/Preferences/com.cisco.webex.webexmta.plist
/Users/Alex/Library/Preferences/com.webex.meetingmanager.plist
/Users/Alex/Library/Preferences/com.cisco.webex.Cisco-WebEx-Start.plist
/Users/Alex/Library/Application Scripts/group.com.cisco.webex.meetings
/Users/Alex/Library/Application Scripts/com.cisco.webex.Cisco-WebEx-Start.CWSSafariExtension
/Users/Alex/Library/HTTPStorages/com.webex.meetingmanager.binarycookies
/Users/Alex/Library/HTTPStorages/com.webex.meetingmanager
/Users/Alex/Library/HTTPStorages/com.cisco.webex.webexmta
/Users/Alex/Library/HTTPStorages/WebEx-PT.webexAppLauncher
/Users/Alex/Library/HTTPStorages/com.cisco.webex.Cisco-WebEx-Start
/Users/Alex/Library/Logs/Webex Meetings
/Users/Alex/Library/Logs/webexmta
/Users/Alex/Library/Group Containers/group.com.cisco.webex.meetings
/Users/Alex/Library/Group Containers/group.com.cisco.webex.meetings/Library/Preferences/group.com.cisco.webex.meetings.plist
/Users/Alex/Library/Group Containers/group.com.cisco.webex.meetings/Library/Application Scripts/group.com.cisco.webex.meetings
/Users/Alex/Library/Containers/com.cisco.webex.Cisco-WebEx-Start.CWSSafariExtension
/Users/Alex/Library/Containers/com.cisco.webex.Cisco-WebEx-Start.CWSSafariExtension/Data/Library/Application Scripts/com.cisco.webex.Cisco-WebEx-Start.CWSSafariExtension
/Users/Alex/Library/Caches/Firefox/Profiles/lvicup2e.default-release/startupCache/webext.sc.lz4
/Users/Alex/Library/Caches/com.webex.meetingmanager
/Users/Alex/Library/Caches/com.cisco.webex.webexmta
/Users/Alex/Library/Caches/com.cisco.webex.Cisco-WebEx-Start
/Users/Alex/Library/Caches/com.plausiblelabs.crashreporter.data/com.cisco.webex.CaptureHost

It would make sense to remove the ~/Library/Preferences, ~/Library/Logs and ~/Library/Caches, but what about the others? Would it be ok to remove all these files and folders to have Webex uninstalled/removed without rendering other applications unusable?

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9
  • What kind of research have you done on this, where are you stuck? Are the deinstallation steps published by the vendor not understandable, did you follow them and got an error (or the deinstallation failed)? Please add relevant details to the question so answers can focus on the actual problem.
    – nohillside ♦
    Jan 13 at 8:06
  • Did you try to use the search engine of your choice to search for „webex uninstall macos“?
    – nohillside ♦
    Jan 13 at 11:28
  • The search engine of my choice recommends a solution that doesn't align with the situation I'm facing. There is no app in the Applications folder: "Drag Webex from the Applications folder to the trash. Go to Mac HD > Users > User Account > Library > Application Support > Cisco Spark > Webex_upgrades folder, then drag Webex to the trash." There are also more files in other places as I laid out in my question — How is this question off-topic?
    – Alex Ixeras
    Jan 13 at 11:28
  • See the on-hold reason. We can‘t know what kind of instructions you followed and how they failed to work unless you tell us. Searching for the topic returns several links, also for the non-app version.
    – nohillside ♦
    Jan 13 at 12:13
  • Preferences etc can always be removed anyway.
    – nohillside ♦
    Jan 13 at 12:15

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
2

While Webex doesn’t provide an uninstaller, there is a free app called App Cleaner I’ve personally used to remove Webex from from my Mac.

I prefer that an App supply its own uninstaller but App Cleaner will not just delete the Application folder but all associated files like Library files and User data.

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3
  • 1
    Thanks, I downloaded App Cleaner. So assuming the main app is in ~/Library/Application Support/WebEx Folder/ I dragged this folder into App Cleaner, but it only indicated to remove ~/Library/Application Support/WebEx Folder, ~/Library/Application Scripts/com.cisco.webex.Cisco-WebEx-Start.CWSSafariExtension, ~/Library/Containers/com.cisco.webex.Cisco-WebEx-Start.CWSSafariExtension and ~/Library/Caches/com.cisco.webex.Cisco-WebEx-Start. There still seem to be a lot of other files that App Cleaner doesn't find / remove, particularly also the preference files.
    – Alex Ixeras
    Jan 18 at 0:10
  • 1
    I also remembered I have an older app called AppZapper (appzapper.com, from 2010), which surprisingly still works. It's not free, but it finds other files like the preference files (~/Preferences/com.webex.meetingmanager.plist and ~/Preferences/com.cisco.webex.Cisco-WebEx-Start.plist) and another cache file that App Cleaner didn't find (~/Library/Caches/com.webex.meetingmanager). On the other hand it didn't find the container file (~/Containers/com.cisco.webex.Cisco-WebEx-Start.CWSSafariExtension) and above application script file that App Cleaner found.
    – Alex Ixeras
    Jan 18 at 0:14
  • 1
    All, in all my search via sudo find /Users -iname "*webex*" 2>&1 | grep -v "Operation not permitted" finds a lot more files (including those from the app remover utilities), and I would be interested to know if I can safely remove all of these.
    – Alex Ixeras
    Jan 18 at 0:16
1

WebEx is particularly intrusive in that it searches for known browsers and installs its messaging scripts to their NativeMessagingHosts.

In addition to using app zappers, you can confidently remove these files and folders if they haven't been removed by those app zappers already. Replace [user] with the user's short name and [browser] with the installed browsers (Mozilla, Chrome, Edge etc. - also check Chrome Canary)

/Users/[user]/Library/Receipts/com.cisco.webex.*
/Users/[user]/Library/Application Support/[browser]/NativeMessagingHosts/com.webex.meeting.json
/Users/[user]/Library/Application Support/Cisco/WebEx Meetings/*
/Users/[user]/Library/Application Support/WebEx Folder/*
/Users/[user]/Library/Saved Application State/com.webex.meetingmanager.savedState
/Users/[user]/Library/WebKit/com.webex.meetingmanager
/Users/[user]/Library/Preferences/com.cisco.webex.webexmta.plist
/Users/[user]/Library/Preferences/com.webex.meetingmanager.plist
/Users/[user]/Library/Preferences/com.cisco.webex.Cisco-WebEx-Start.plist
/Users/[user]/Library/Application Scripts/group.com.cisco.webex.meetings
/Users/[user]/Library/Application Scripts/com.cisco.webex.Cisco-WebEx-Start.CWSSafariExtension
/Users/[user]/Library/HTTPStorages/com.webex.meetingmanager.binarycookies
/Users/[user]/Library/HTTPStorages/com.webex.meetingmanager
/Users/[user]/Library/HTTPStorages/com.cisco.webex.webexmta
/Users/[user]/Library/HTTPStorages/WebEx-PT.webexAppLauncher
/Users/[user]/Library/HTTPStorages/com.cisco.webex.Cisco-WebEx-Start
/Users/[user]/Library/Logs/Webex Meetings
/Users/[user]/Library/Group Containers/group.com.cisco.webex.meetings/*
/Users/[user]/Library/Containers/com.cisco.webex.Cisco-WebEx-Start.CWSSafariExtension/*
/Users/[user]/Library/Caches/com.webex.meetingmanager
/Users/[user]/Library/Caches/com.cisco.webex.webexmta
/Users/[user]/Library/Caches/com.cisco.webex.Cisco-WebEx-Start
/Users/[user]/Library/Caches/com.plausiblelabs.crashreporter.data/com.cisco.webex.CaptureHost

I only trust app developers supplying their own app cleaners to a limited degree because they don't really have your best interest in mind - after all, you're removing their app. These app cleaners might remove the app to a degree that the app itself and its prefs are removed, but not really all traces.

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1
  • Thank you. This is spot on!
    – Alex Ixeras
    Sep 12 at 23:50

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