How to uninstall a printer from your Mac

Even though so much of our lives are now entirely digital, many of us still use printers occasionally, whether to print worksheets for a class, or important documents that need a physical signature.

Using a printer with your Mac means adding it in System Preferences and installing drivers. When you need to replace your printer, you will also need to remove the old one and uninstall its drivers. Below, I’ll show you how to remove a printer on your Mac.

Why uninstall a printer?

If you no longer need to use a printer with your Mac, perhaps because you’ve bought a new one, it’s good to reinstall the old one to prevent driver conflicts and other possible problems later. If you don’t, you probably won’t keep the drivers updated, and that could create issues with other printer drivers in the future.

How to delete a printer on your Mac

1. Click on the Apple menu and choose System Preferences.
2. Choose the Printers & Scanners pane.
3. Select the printer you want to delete in the sidebar.
4. Press ‘-‘ at the bottom of the sidebar.

How to uninstall printer drivers on your Mac

Deleting a printer in System Preferences makes it unavailable in the Print dialog box. However, it doesn’t uninstall it completely. To do that, you need to remove all the files on your Mac when you installed the drivers. If the printer manufacturer has an uninstaller (which should be in a folder in your Applications folder), the easiest way is to follow this instruction:

1. Navigate to your Applications folder and look for a folder with the name of the printer manufacturer.
2. Double-click the folder to open it and locate the Uninstaller file.
3. Double-click the uninstaller and follow the instructions.

If there’s no uninstaller, you have two options that I’ll describe below.

Option 1: the manual method

Printer drivers install several files in different folders on your Mac, so to completely uninstall a printer manually, you will need to look in each of the possible folders and drag files to the Trash.

• Click on the Finder icon in the Dock.
• Choose the Go menu and then Go to Folder.
  
• Paste each of the paths below into the text box, one at a time. At each location, look for files with the name of your printer manufacturer and drag them to the Trash.

~/Library/Cache

~/Library/Preferences

~/Library/Logs

~/Library/Application Support

~/Library/Containers

~/Library/Printers

• Once you’ve checked all those folders and dragged all the files you can find to the Trash, empty the Trash.

Option 2: the easy method

As you can see, uninstalling a printer manually needs a lot of effort and takes a while. Fortunately, there is a utterly stress-free way with a handy tool CleanMyMac X.

CleanMyMac X has lots of modules for removing clutter from your Mac and keeping it running smoothly. Its Uninstaller module can uninstall most apps, including printer drivers. You can download it for free here.

1. Launch CleanMyMac X and choose the Uninstaller in the sidebar.
2. Type the name of the printer maker in the search box.
3. When the drivers appear in the right-hand window, check the box to select them.
4. Click Uninstall.

Once you’ve pressed Uninstall, CleanMyMac X will remove all the files placed on your Mac by the printer driver, and it will be completely uninstalled.

Deleting a printer in System Preferences is simple enough. But that doesn’t uninstall it entirely from your Mac. To do that, you will need to uninstall the drivers. If the printer manufacturer supplied an uninstaller, you could use that. However, many don’t. And that means you’ve got two options: track down every file the driver has placed on your Mac, or use CleanMyMac X Uninstaller. I know which one I’d choose!