Many Mac utilities are provided as preference panes which are installed and accessed through the System Preferences function in OS X. Third-party preference panes display in System Preferences under the ‘Other’ category.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll collect a number of preference panes on your travels, some of which you’ll rarely or never use. If you want to remove an unused preference pane, you first have to remember where it was installed.

There are two default locations for preference pane installations: in your home folder (username/Library/PreferencePanes) or in your system library folder (/Library/PreferencePanes).

OS X is Hiding Your Library Folder

Once you figure out which folder a preference pane is located in, you can use the Finder to go to that folder and drag the unwanted preference pane to the trash, or you can use this quicker method.

Remove Preference Panes With Just a Click or Two

1. Launch System Preferences by clicking the ‘System Preferences’ icon in the Dock, or by selecting ‘System Preferences’ from the Apple menu.
2. Right-click the preference pane you wish to remove. (This tip only works for preference panes listed under the ‘Other’ category.)
3. Select ‘Remove xxxx Preference Pane from the pop-up menu, where ‘xxxx’ is the name of the preference pane you wish to remove.

This will remove the preference pane, no matter where it was installed on your Mac, saving you the time it would have taken to track down the installation location.

Published: 7/9/2009

Updated: 5/12/2015