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Samsung Magician disk utility takes 18 steps and two reboots to uninstall

https://chalmovsky.com/2026/03/29/samsung-magician.html
71•chalmovsky•4d ago

Comments

thisago•4d ago
It's comic when reading but for sure this is tragic. I _have a feeling_ that bloat will continue increasing in the next years.

It makes me wonder why did large companies are investing so much in web and putting web devs to write disk utility desktop apps?

applfanboysbgon•38m ago
> It makes me wonder why did large companies are investing so much in web and putting web devs to write disk utility desktop apps?

It's because in these environments where corporate cancer has metastatised, programmers are not in charge of hiring programmers, or much of anything when it comes to decision-making really. HR is composed of people who are not programmers. They are looking to hire people with a list of shiny hot new web stack keywords on a resume, because they have literally no other concept of how to filter cadidate applications. So they end up with a bunch of hot React devs and nobody capable of making software that is fit for task.

adrianton3•8m ago
I don't follow - why do you think HR would be interested in shiny hot new web stack keywords over anything else?
daneel_w•1h ago
"I took an 'app coding' course in college".
Cthulhu_•1h ago
It reminds me of a lot of Windows software, especially virus scanners and supposed antimalware tools, going back 20+ years.
b00ty4breakfast•1h ago
this reminds me, I still have an ancient version of iTunes on my old win7 box because something got corrupted at some point and now I can't uninstall it.

Not being able to simply remove a program like you would any other program is next level evil in my book.

Barbing•51m ago
I have a modern application from the macOS App Store in a permanent update purgatory. I dared drag to delete it, now it won’t update nor open. But an update is always shown available!
saagarjha•1h ago
I feel like the complaints here are…not really Samsung's fault?

> So I’ve dug around and found a cleanup script buried six folders deep inside the app bundle. Let’s try to run it:

> sh ~/Library/'Application Support'/Samsung/'Samsung Magician'/SamsungMagician.app/Contents/Resources/CleanupMagician_Admin_Mac.sh

> It ran. And my kitty exploded. Sweet kitty overflowed. Hundreds - literally hundreds - of lines of chown: Operation not permitted.

I mean, if you read on, you'll find that most of the things that were removed were from system folders that are owned by root? Presumably this was run without sudo…

> I rm -rf every Samsung folder I could find. The Preferences. The Caches. The LaunchAgents. The LaunchDaemons. The kernel extensions. The crash reports.

…that's where you put your stuff on macOS. Would you prefer that they picked some non-standard location you had to dig up?

> Package receipts in /private/var/db/receipts/ (Samsung left its receipts behind like a burglar leaving a bunch of turds in the living room)

This is again for your benefit so you know what was installed on your system

> Cached processes in /private/var/folders/7v/<your username hash>/C/ (yes, Samsung is in there too)

That's getconf DARWIN_USER_CACHE_DIR

> I shut down my Mac. Held the power button. Booted into Recovery Mode. Opened Terminal. Ran csrutil disable. Rebooted. Opened Terminal. Deleted the kernel extensions.

That's just how kernel extensions are on Apple silicon

bee_rider•58m ago
Yeah, the two steps:

* going into some internal directory and running a script based on the name

* deleting a bunch of directories

Seem like pretty bad ideas. Especially for software provided by a hardware vendor, which is probably a little clunky and inherently touches deep stuff.

But not including a removal script seems like bad form.

Edit: On the other hand, I don’t actually know for certain that the tool doesn’t have an uninstall script. Just, that the author didn’t find it. This seems worth noting because the author really wasn’t giving them the benefit of the doubt on anything, see all of the irrelevant complaints about animations.

malfist•51m ago
This type of writing is very grating on the nerves. It's not AI slop, but it feels the same way, where AI slop is trying to trick you into thinking every sentence is the pinnacle insight of human endeavor of all history, this writing stops every single sentence to say "Are you outraged? I'm outraged! You should be outraged! This is outrageous!"

Especially when the outrage is that the user didn't follow instructions to use sudo on an uninstaller that needs to touch root owned files.

greazy•47m ago
I completely disagree. I loved this article. I could feel the authors frustration and disdain for the software.

It was funny and helpful.

atoav•41m ago
Well I once watched an sysadmin with 430 years of experience swear his way through an installation process. Until I, back then a intern, pointed out that maybe reading the install instructions would have been a good idea, since there were some steps in there that would have saved us some time. We scrapped everything and reinstalled following the instructions and 15 minuted later it worked.

I admit that I also often deviate from installation processes, but only when I really know why I want to do that. And I tend to read the instructions first.

But I know people who are snuggly proud about not reading the manual and I really don't get it.

close04•11m ago
When all else fails, read the manual. It’s a tried and tested practice among experts worth their salt.

A lit of practices save you 10s each day but when they fail you lose 10 years’ worth of savings.

raincole•33m ago
The writing style has a name called ragebaiting. The gold:

> Localization files for every language on Earth

Yeah because English is the only one language that matters. Let's fuck up all the non-native speakers to save, I don't know, 500kb of text files? How could one frame this as a bad thing?

> Help documentation with 40+ screenshots in 10 languages

Seriously how Anglocentric could this author be? Even physical products have multi-language manuals nowadays.

calin2k•44m ago
samsung magician managed to help me clone a hdd to a ssd on windows with ease
0xAFFFF•41m ago
Parts of that article are just downright terrible.

First, the criticism of Electron is moot. Yes it's not sleek, but it's sufficient. This app is not supposed to be used heavily on a daily basis. Run it once to setup your drive, run it a few months later for a firmware upgrade or a quick health check and that's all. And when you had a taste of the absolute UX monsters some hardware vendors can produce on the software side, really an Electron app feels nice.

But it gets more ridiculous. Embedded fonts? God forbid companies enforce their own design guidelines in their software. Translations? Fuck non-English speakers. User guide with screenshots? The audacity.

internet2000•16m ago
I hate how Mac OS makes it harder to delete than to add stuff to system folders. I forgot what was it, but adding something worked with sudo, removing it required disabling sip. Is there a reason for that?
r_lee•9m ago
it all makes sense if you know how Korean software is like.

buttons being jpegs is the norm

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Samsung Magician disk utility takes 18 steps and two reboots to uninstall

https://chalmovsky.com/2026/03/29/samsung-magician.html
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