VirtualBox tools and virtual machines on MAC take up a lot of storage space on MAC devices. Online Mac forums are full of complaints about Mac OS device’s storage space getting filled up quickly after installing or updating VirtualBox. In this guide, we are going to show you how you can Completely Uninstall VirtualBox Mac from iMac and MacBook. You can also follow the instructions in this guide if you are looking to remove buggy VirtualBox and replace it with an updated version.
Read the following guide to uninstall VirtualBox from your MAC completely along with all its components to free up storage space or to install a new updated version.
How to Manually Uninstall VirtualBox on Mac Completely
Before starting, it is important to note the difference between just removing an app and uninstalling it completely along with all supported files and software. Removing an app doesn’t clear out associated files from the system while uninstalling it removes the entire footprint of the app from your device which recovers more storage space than just removing it.
Here are the steps you need to perform in order to manually remove VirtualBox from your Mac.
- First of all, you need to send VirtualBox to Trash bin: go to Finder > Applications, click Move to Trash in the context menu.
- Now, it may appear that VirtualBox has been removed permanently, but the virtual machine still remains on the hard disk, which can take up to 1GB space on Linux and up to 20GB on Mac or Windows. That’s why you should remove the virtual machine with supported files to recovery storage consumed by useless files.
- For that, on your Mac device, go to the Library folder and remove all files and folders linked to the virtual machine.
~/Library/VirtualBox
~/Library/Preferences/org.VirtualBox.app.VirtualBox.plist
~/Library/Saved Application State/org.VirtualBox.app.VirtualBox.SavedState
~/Library/LaunchAgents/org.virtualbox.vboxwebsrv.plist
~/Library/Saved Application State/org.VirtualBox.app.VirtualBox.SavedState - In order to open a hidden Library Folder, you need to open Finder in the Apple menu and click Go and type ~Library in the search box.
That’s all.
Select all unnecessary files in the junk folder and permanently delete them using the above steps. You can also use tools like CCleaner to remove apps from Mac completely. Install the tool and drag and drop apps onto its interface and click the complete uninstall button.
