Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Zorn

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 14, 2006
1,111
787
Ohio
I've been trying to clean up my Applications folder, and I was trying to hide junk like Game Center, Chess, DVD Player, Photo Booth. I found some instructions on hiding these apps online, but the chflags hidden command in terminal does not seem to work at all under 10.11. Anyone know how to hide these apps on El Cap?

I do have SIP disabled.
 

Shirasaki

macrumors P6
May 16, 2015
15,647
10,955
I don't know if it is possible, but I will directly delete unwanted apps in other systems such as Linux, even system own one.
 

fisherking

macrumors G4
Jul 16, 2010
11,098
5,443
ny somewhere
I've been trying to clean up my Applications folder, and I was trying to hide junk like Game Center, Chess, DVD Player, Photo Booth. I found some instructions on hiding these apps online, but the chflags hidden command in terminal does not seem to work at all under 10.11. Anyone know how to hide these apps on El Cap?

I do have SIP disabled.

how urgent is it to go into that folder? there are a half-dozen ways to get to apps (ie the dock, launchpad, spotlight). and...since the "OS requires" them, why not just leave them there? i believe, with each OS update, they'll simply reappear (someone correct me if that's wrong). just seems like a minor thing (but annoying the way default apps on the phone are annoying...and a reason why i jailbreak)....
 

w0lf

macrumors 65816
Feb 16, 2013
1,268
109
USA
I don't even think you need SIP disabled to do this. System apps do require sudo for chflags to be able to edit them.

Code:
# hide
sudo chflags -h hidden "/Applications/Someapp.app"

# show
sudo chflags -h nohidden "/Applications/Someapp.app"


Toggle hidden status script (requires xcode command line tools for GetFileInfo)
Code:
for f in "$@"
do
    status=$(GetFileInfo -P -av "$f")
    if [[ $status = 0 ]]; then
        sudo chflags -h hidden "$f"
    else
        sudo chflags -h nohidden "$f"
    fi
done

how urgent is it to go into that folder? there are a half-dozen ways to get to apps (ie the dock, launchpad, spotlight). and...since the "OS requires" them, why not just leave them there? i believe, with each OS update, they'll simply reappear (someone correct me if that's wrong). just seems like a minor thing (but annoying the way default apps on the phone are annoying...and a reason why i jailbreak)....

It's actually very easy to hide them. They will only reappear after updates if the application has been modified. The process of hiding apps if very simple if you're vaguely familiar with terminal and it's no work at all to make a script that you run after an update to hide all of the system apps you want hidden.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Zorn

zhaoxin

macrumors 6502
Jan 28, 2015
307
65
I've been trying to clean up my Applications folder, and I was trying to hide junk like Game Center, Chess, DVD Player, Photo Booth. I found some instructions on hiding these apps online, but the chflags hidden command in terminal does not seem to work at all under 10.11. Anyone know how to hide these apps on El Cap?

I do have SIP disabled.

I think you can just hide them by put them in an app folder and put the folder to the screen next to your current last screen. Or you can create another folder outside of you app folder, and drag all your unwanted apps to that folder if you don't want to delete them directly. Apps that outside the default folder will not appear in launchpad.
 

Zorn

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 14, 2006
1,111
787
Ohio
I don't even think you need SIP disabled to do this. System apps do require sudo for chflags to be able to edit them.

Code:
# hide
sudo chflags -h hidden "/Applications/Someapp.app"

# show
sudo chflags -h nohidden "/Applications/Someapp.app"


Toggle hidden status script (requires xcode command line tools for GetFileInfo)
Code:
for f in "$@"
do
    status=$(GetFileInfo -P -av "$f")
    if [[ $status = 0 ]]; then
        sudo chflags -h hidden "$f"
    else
        sudo chflags -h nohidden "$f"
    fi
done



It's actually very easy to hide them. They will only reappear after updates if the application has been modified. The process of hiding apps if very simple if you're vaguely familiar with terminal and it's no work at all to make a script that you run after an update to hide all of the system apps you want hidden.


Thank you! Your method worked, when I tried some of the ways I found online it would give a message about not being allowed.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.