How to un-install Samsung Magician from your Mac

Question

How to un-install Samsung Magician from your Mac

I recently purchased Samsung SSD's for an external SSD enclosure. The drives work very well, but in the packaging a leaflet encourages you to install a product called Samsung Magician.

This would be fine if it actually did something useful and was easy to turn off or disable later, but its just the opposite. It wants to start every time, and you can't delete it easily. Even Clean My Mac could not delete it. Every time I would reboot my computer it would be sitting in the task bar. I can't cofirm it,but my M4 Mac mini with 24GB of Ram "felt sluggish" with it running, though that could be just me.

Anyway, if this has happened to you and you want to get rid of Samsung Magician, here's how.

Step 1: Run the Official Cleanup Script First, try Samsung's built-in uninstaller script:

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

Enter your admin password when prompted. You may see some errors about missing files - this is normal and indicates those components were already removed.

Step 2: Remove Application and Support Files Run these commands to delete all Samsung Magician application files:

Remove application support files

rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Samsung/

Remove the app if still present in Applications

sudo rm -rf /Applications/Samsung\ Magician.app

Remove preferences

rm -f ~/Library/Preferences/com.samsung.magician*

Remove launch agents if present

rm -f ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.samsung*

Remove cache files

rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/com.samsung*

Step 3: Clean Up Additional Remnants Remove crash reports and recent document references:

Remove crash reporter files

rm -f ~/Library/Application\ Support/CrashReporter/SamsungMagician_*.plist

Remove recent documents reference

rm -f ~/Library/Application\

Support/com.apple.sharedfilelist/com.apple.LSSharedFileList.ApplicationRecentDocuments/com.samsung.magician.8.0.sfl3

Remove any remaining Samsung Magician folder

rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Samsung\ Magician

Step 4: Clear Staged Kernel Extensions Remove protected kernel extensions:

sudo kmutil clear-staging

Enter your admin password when prompted.

Step 5: Verify Complete Removal Check that all Samsung Magician files are gone:

Check for any remaining Samsung Magician files in user Library

find ~/Library -name "samsung" -o -name "Samsung" 2>/dev/null | grep -i magician

Check system-wide (will show Adobe camera profiles which are unrelated)

sudo find /Library -name "samsung" -o -name "Samsung" 2>/dev/null | grep -i magician

If these commands return nothing, Samsung Magician is completely removed.

Step 6: Restart Your Mac Restart your computer to ensure all background processes are cleared and kernel extensions are fully unloaded.

Notes:

Some "no matches found" or "No such file or directory" errors are normal - they indicate files were already removed
Your Samsung SSD will continue to work perfectly without Samsung Magician
The many Samsung files in Adobe folders are camera/lens profiles for photo editing and are unrelated to Samsung Magician

What This Removes:

Samsung Magician application
Background services and drivers
Preferences and settings
Kernel extensions
Cache files
System packages

Also, some extra good news: Your Samsung SSD will function normally as a standard drive after removal. macOS's built-in Disk Utility can handle any necessary drive management tasks.

Shame on Samsung.

Posted on Aug 5, 2025 2:08 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Old Toad

Level 10

215,196 points

Aug 5, 2025 2:51 PM in response to Mark from 2Much

You've gone from the frying pan into the fire with CleanMyMac. Most of the experienced contributors here in these forums consider CMM akin to malware.

First, there is no reason to ever install or run any 3rd party "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus, VPN or security apps on your Mac. This documents describe what you need to know and do in order to protect your Mac: Effective defenses against malware and other threats - Apple Community and Recognize and avoid phishing messages, phony support calls, and other scams - Apple Support.

There are no known viruses, i.e. self propagating, for Macs. There are, however, adware and malware which require the user to install although unwittingly most of the time thru sneaky links, etc.

Anti Virus developers try to group all types as viruses into their ad campaigns of fear. They do a poor job of the detecting and isolating the adware and malware. Since there are no viruses these apps use up a lot of system resources searching for what is non-existent and adversely affect system and app performance.

There is one app, Malwarebytes, which was developed by a long time contributor to these forums and a highly respected member of the computer security community, that is designed solely to seek out adware and known malware and remove it. The free version is more than adequate for most users.

Unless you're using a true VPN tunnel, such as between you and your employer's, school's or bank's servers, they provide false security from a privacy standpoint. Read these two articles: Public VPN's are anything but private and Security Risks: The Dangers of Using Free VPNs (eccu.edu).

Additionally, a new study ("Apple Offers Apps With Ties to Chinese Military”) is specifically about VPN apps in Apple’s App Store.

Uninstall CleanMyMac and Samsung Magician according to the developer's instructions.

Note: there's an app removal app that I use but it needs to be used with care: AppCleaner

WARNING: If you use AppCleaner on an app that you have other apps from the same developer, like Adobe, you must be extremely careful checking all checkboxes and deleting. Some for those files may support other apps from the same developer and deleting them can mess them up. Adobe apps is a primary example. I know from experience. For singular apps from a developer it's safe.

You can check to see if you've removed all of the supporting files by downloading and running the shareware app Find Any File to search for any files with the application's or the developer's name in the file name. For the mentioned software you'd do the following search(es):

1 - Name contains cleanmymac

2 - Name contains macpaw

3 - Name contains magician

4 - name contains samsung

Any files that are found can be dragged from the search results window to the Desktop or Trash bin in the Dock for deletion.

FAF can search areas that Spotlight can't like invisible folders, system folders and packages.

If you get warnings that the file can't be deleted because it is in use or used by another app boot into Safe Mode according to How to use safe mode on your Mac and delete from there.

Note: if you have a wireless keyboard with rechargeable batteries connect it with its charging cable before booting into Safe Mode. This makes it act as a wired keyboard as will assure a successful boot into Safe Mode.

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