how to delete itunes from mac

There is no application that speaks Apple more than iTunes. First introduced in 2001, iTunes has become lot of things over the years — media store, player, and library, internet radio, music & video streaming service. It has come a long way, gradually introducing and perfecting features.

music store itunes

Despite earning the spot of go-to media hub in hearts of many, iTunes is still, unfortunately, not impeccable and has been reported to have bugs causing it to misbehave. Not to mention that excessive library items can get pretty overwhelming too. This guide, however, is here to help get these issues sorted out.

How to Delete Music from iTunes on Mac

Apple Music subscription makes it extremely easy to find and add new songs. You find a cool tune on iTunes featured playlist, end up checking out the artist and adding an entire album, and before you know it — you're already exploring tons of stuff from similar artists. Point is, iTunes library can quickly get out of control. This can lead to having a ton of storage taken up by media that is rarely being put to use.

All in all, inevitably you end up having to regain free space on your main drive, tidy up your library and remove the music you don't listen to (you can always download it back again as easily). Here's how you can do it:

Open iTunes
Select Library tab
Ctrl-click on the album you want to remove
Choose Delete from Library
Confirm you want to delete the item in the popped up screen
Hit Move to Trash again to move the file to Trash

You can hit Keep file but your item will not be removed from your actual disk.

How to Remove Duplicate Songs in iTunes

After you finish cleaning out your Library, take it one step further and remove song duplicates.

itunes delete duplicates

Open iTunes
Click on File in the menu bar
Select Library > Show Duplicate Files
Select the items you want to remove paying attention to song version and album
Hit Done

You can also opt for MacFly Pro to clean duplicates on your entire Mac (including iTunes) and make even more room on your disk.

Open MacFly Pro
Select Duplicates module and click Scan
Choose items to delete and hit Delete Selected

If iTunes performance is what's giving you trouble, proceed to reinstalling it on your Mac.

How to Uninstall iTunes from Mac

Before you jump into completely deleting iTunes from your Mac, try downloading the latest version from Apple and running the installer. It should reinstall the app and potentially solve the problems you are dealing with. If, however, running the installer doesn't help the case, try installing iTunes from scratch.

Go to Finder > Applications
Select and drag iTunes.app to Trash
Ctrl-click on Trash and hit Empty Trash

itunes uninstall error

OSX may display an error when attempting to uninstall iTunes. If that's what happened, try changing permissions:

Ctrl-click iTunes.app and choose Get Info
Expand Sharing & Permissions section and click the lock icon
Type in your admin password
Set everyone to Read & Write
Drag iTunes.app to Trash and empty it.

change itunes permissions

There are cases when macOS prevents you from changing permissions for security reasons. At this point, you should really reconsider if you want to continue tinkering with system files that Apple purposely restricted access to. Proceed if you decided not to throw in the towel just yet.

How to disable System Integrity Protection

Newer versions of macOS (namely Sierra and High Sierra) and their System Integrity Protection have been known to lock out users from making permission changes. This, obviously, is done with security in mind, yet makes actions like uninstalling iTunes problematic. To alter permissions, you will first have to disable SIP.

Note: there is no reason why you should be disabling SIP, unless you know exactly what you're doing.

Restart your Mac and hold Command-R to boot into recovery mode
Click on Utilities in the menu bar and select Terminal
Run the following command to check the SIP status

csrutil status

Type in this command to disable SIP

csrutil disable

Restart your Mac and follow the guide to change permissions and delete iTunes.app

After performing fresh install, reboot to recovery again and re-enable SIP with the command: csrutil enable

Finally, it is worth mentioning that even altered permissions have not been able to solve the issue as macOS High Sierra just does not want you to remove iTunes. To fix the issues you are having with iTunes you may have to restore from a TimeMachine backup or reinstall macOS.