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I tried to remove Chess.app from my Mac:

  • Moving to Trash: “Chess.app” can’t be modified or deleted because it’s required by macOS.
  • Trying to change permissions for everyone in Get Info: The operation can’t be completed because you don’t have the necessary permission.
  • chmod 755 Chess.app/ in Terminal works, but then doing sudo rm -rf Chess.app/: long list including rm: Chess.app/: Operation not permitted

So how can I remove it?

nohillside
  • 100,768
FLOWMEEN
  • 189

1 Answers1

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Chess.app is, as everything else installed by default, protected by SIP and can't be removed. If you absolutely want to reclaim the 5mb used by the application you can

  • Reboot into Recovery Mode to disable SIP
  • Reboot normally, log in and remove Chess.app
  • Reboot into Recovery Mode to enable SIP
  • Reboot normally
  • (and then repeat this with every macOS upgrade)

See How do I disable System Integrity Protection (SIP) AKA "rootless" on OS X 10.11, El Capitan? for details about disabling/enabling SIP.

nohillside
  • 100,768
  • +1 for pointing out that it's only 5MB in size (although it's 8.8MB on High Sierra) :) – Scott Earle Oct 27 '17 at 06:35
  • I always found it interesting that people want to get rid these pre-installed apps. If it's that they take up too much space or that they get in your way... well, either way I'm not sure I get it. I believe all pre-installed apps together take up ~2GB of your disk space. And you don't really need to ever see those apps depending on how you launch apps in general. I guess that is like 400 more songs you could stuff in... or one movie. – Joonas Oct 27 '17 at 06:50
  • @ScottEarle du says 4952 here (High Sierra 10.13.1 Beta), Finder says "7’885’411 Byte (5.1 MB on Volume)". Whatever that means :-) – nohillside Oct 27 '17 at 07:16
  • @patrix The bundle is compressed transparently and occupies 5.1 MB of disk space. The (real) uncompressed bundle size is 7.9 MB. – klanomath Oct 27 '17 at 07:28
  • Yeah I don't understand why so many sizes, either. My machine (also 10.13.1 beta 5) says 8,776,171 bytes (7.3MB on disk). I give up :) – Scott Earle Oct 27 '17 at 08:09