How to uninstall drivers in OS X Lion

Question

I had to install different drivers in OS X Lion to check if a unknown mouse would work, and now I would like to uninstall them. What is the best approach? Obviously I could try to find the folder with the driver's name and delete it, but sometimes these drivers are spread across the filesystem.

PS: Concrete drivers: steermouse, trust mouse and keyboard, logitech control center

Solution

Many support applications come as Preference Panes, accessible through the System Preferences. You can:

• find them in ~/Library/PreferencePanes or /Library/PreferencePanes and delete them from there, or
• right-click and remove them in the System Preferences dialog itself

Also look under /System/Library/Extensions for Kernel Extensions that were added. Note though that manually deleting stuff here can cause serious problems.

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However, that doesn't work for all of these, and each application you mention does it differently. You're right that manually removing files is not a good way to uninstall these programs. Therefore, the developers offer uninstallers:

• SteerMouse has an uninstaller you can access by opening the SteerMouse app. Open /Applications/Utilities/SteerMouse and select Help » Uninstall….

• Logitech Control Center can be uninstalled through the installer or a separate uninstaller application called "LCC Uninstaller". It should also be in the /Applications/Utilities folder.

Comments

[slhck]

For Trust mice, I have no idea. Look for the documentation or if the installer has an uninstall option.

[brevno]

The actual drivers are usually installed in /System/Library/Extensions/. Just removing a preference pane might cause problems later on — for example none of the gestures on my Magic Mouse worked because I hadn't removed USB Overdrive's kernel extension.

[slhck]

@Lri That's why the developers should add an uninstaller, but you're right of course. I just wouldn't recommend people to go berserk in that folder and delete what they don't like. Added that to the answer nevertheless.