How To Get Rid Of the Google Apps In LaunchPad On Your Mac

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to get rid of all those little Goggle Apps that suddenly appeared in Launchpad.

If you use Launchpad and you suddenly one day noticed a bunch of apps appearing there that you didn't install. Well, there is an explanation. In this case I can see here Gmail, Goggle Drive, Sheets, Slides, and YouTube. You may see some others as well. But you didn't install any apps like this. You may use YouTube as a website, for instance, but you didn't install a YouTube app. Certainly not an app for Sheets, meaning Goggle Sheets or Slides, meaning Goggle Slides, or Goggle Drive. So what's going on here? 

Launchpad shows you all the applications in both your System Applications folder and your Home folder's applications folder. If you look in Finder and then go to Applications you won't find these there. For instance, looking under S here I won't find Sheets. But if I go to my Home Folder, my User Account folder, and if I look in that then you may see a Folder called Chrome Apps. If you look in there that's where you'll see these applications. 

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Now notice they're tiny little applications. Just 2 MB. Hardly the size for an application to handle what these apps will actually handle. Like Goggle Sheets is an entire spreadsheet app. Because those are web apps. They are actually using Goggle Sheets on the web as a webpage, not as an actual application like Numbers or Excel.

Now you may be confused as to why you see these here. How did this Chrome Apps folder get there? How did all these apps get in it and how can you get rid of them or at least get them out of Launchpad. Well, the answer, of course, has to do with the Goggle Chrome browser. It has functionality in it where you can have web apps exist kind of as regular apps. But it is really just a trick. You're actually just going to that webpage. It is the same as actually going to the URL for that site. Like the page for Goggle Sheets or Goggle Docs or Gmail. But the Chrome browser does this trick where it puts this Chrome App's folder in your Application's Folder in your Home Folder and puts these little apps there that allow you quick access to these webpages. Then since they are here in your Applications Folder they will appear in Launchpad which is what the Chrome browser wants and probably what a lot of users of these web apps want as well. But if you don't want them in Launchpad and you don't want them here in your Applications Folder you can get rid of them. 

Now in Launchpad if you click and hold on the apps so they all wiggle you know the apps installed from the App Store can be uninstalled using the little x button there. But these weren't installed from the App Store. The Chrome browser installed them. So you can't get rid of them that way. 

If you go into this folder here in your Applications Folder you can actually get rid of them this way. Let's get rid of the Slides App. I'm just going to drag it to the Trash or you can use Command Delete to get rid of it. Now if you look in Launchpad you'll see that it goes away. We actually were quick enough to actually see it disappear there. So that's one way to deal with it. But there's actually a better way. One that is rarely discussed if you search for a solution for this. 

That's to launch Chrome itself. You probably have it already launched if you are a Chrome user. Then look at your Installed Chrome Apps. How do you do that? Well, you type Chrome://apps. Then you'll see all your installed apps here. Now you can Control Click, right click, or two-finger click on a trackpad on any one of these. Let's do it for Sheets here. You'll see one of the things you can do is Uninstall. You can also go to App, Settings, and there is also an Uninstall button. Either way if you Uninstall it, then you'll see it is gone now from Chrome. It doesn't mean that you can't go to that webpage or bookmark that webpage to use that Goggle App. It is just not going to be this Chrome browser installed app here. 

Now if we look back in the Finder notice this disappeared from that Chrome Apps Folder in your Applications Folder in your Home Folder. When we launch Launchpad we'll see that it is gone from Launchpad as well. 

Now do note that a lot of people report when they get rid of the app manually from their Home Folder, Applications Folder, that sometimes it will disappear from Launchpad and come back later on. I suspect this may happen in some cases if you manually remove the file from this folder. If instead you actually remove it from the Chrome App's page here by uninstalling it then I would imagine it wouldn't come back like that. 

So that's definitely the best way to get rid of these little Chrome apps. Having them installed is handy if you are a frequent user of that app. The Chrome browser will cache a lot of data locally and even allow you to access some of your documents locally if you're not connected to the internet. But if you're just a casual user, or maybe not a user at all of some of these Goggle Web Apps, then uninstalling them from Chrome right here and not have them fill up Launchpad is probably your best bet. 

Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.