Samsung Magician disk utility takes 18 steps and two reboots to uninstall
by chalmovsky on 3/29/2026, 8:55:46 PM
https://chalmovsky.com/2026/03/29/samsung-magician.html
Comments
by: didgetmaster
I worked on a disk utility in the 90s called PartitionMagic that was one of the first ones to let you dynamically resize disk partitions.<p>Maybe Samsung used that when naming their product.<p>I am old, but I miss the days when the install process was copy <i>.</i> to /<appFolder> and the uninstall process was delete /<appFolder>
4/3/2026, 2:39:30 PM
by: Shank
I think the most obscene thing here is that macOS is now littered with permission prompts for camera, background execution, etc, but makes no effort to stop even industry partners from spraying the disk with dozens of files that can’t be removed easily.
4/3/2026, 2:19:46 PM
by: r_lee
it all makes sense if you know how Korean software is like.<p>buttons being jpegs is the norm
4/3/2026, 2:06:07 PM
by: thisago
It's comic when reading but for sure this is tragic. I _have a feeling_ that bloat will continue increasing in the next years.<p>It makes me wonder why did large companies are investing so much in web and putting web devs to write disk utility desktop apps?
3/29/2026, 9:32:12 PM
by: b00ty4breakfast
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.<p>Not being able to simply remove a program like you would any other program is next level evil in my book.
4/3/2026, 12:45:41 PM
by: internet2000
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?
4/3/2026, 1:58:57 PM
by: g947o
I empathize with many of the complaints, but some are a bit ridiculous. Using custom fonts in software UI is completely reasonable and normal, even if you don't like it.
4/3/2026, 2:14:33 PM
by: malfist
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!"<p>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.
4/3/2026, 1:24:09 PM
by: calin2k
samsung magician managed to help me clone a hdd to a ssd on windows with ease
4/3/2026, 1:30:55 PM
by: Cthulhu_
It reminds me of a lot of Windows software, especially virus scanners and supposed antimalware tools, going back 20+ years.
4/3/2026, 12:42:07 PM
by: saagarjha
I feel like the complaints here are…not really Samsung's fault?<p>> So I’ve dug around and found a cleanup script buried six folders deep inside the app bundle. Let’s try to run it:<p>> sh ~/Library/'Application Support'/Samsung/'Samsung Magician'/SamsungMagician.app/Contents/Resources/CleanupMagician_Admin_Mac.sh<p>> It ran. And my kitty exploded. Sweet kitty overflowed. Hundreds - literally hundreds - of lines of chown: Operation not permitted.<p>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…<p>> I rm -rf every Samsung folder I could find. The Preferences. The Caches. The LaunchAgents. The LaunchDaemons. The kernel extensions. The crash reports.<p>…that's where you put your stuff on macOS. Would you prefer that they picked some non-standard location you had to dig up?<p>> Package receipts in /private/var/db/receipts/ (Samsung left its receipts behind like a burglar leaving a bunch of turds in the living room)<p>This is again for your benefit so you know what was installed on your system<p>> Cached processes in /private/var/folders/7v/<your username hash>/C/ (yes, Samsung is in there too)<p>That's getconf DARWIN_USER_CACHE_DIR<p>> 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.<p>That's just how kernel extensions are on Apple silicon
4/3/2026, 1:03:40 PM
by: daneel_w
"I took an 'app coding' course in college".
4/3/2026, 12:37:02 PM
by: zhongwei2049
[flagged]
4/3/2026, 1:18:27 PM
by: 0xAFFFF
Parts of that article are just downright terrible.<p>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.<p>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 <i>screenshots</i>? The audacity.
4/3/2026, 1:34:00 PM