One way to proceed is to open the MacTeX-2019 install package and select “Show Files” from the resulting “File” menu of Apple’s installer. The software is smart enough to know that these links no longer point to live data. Incidentally, when you remove a TeX Distribution, say TeX Live 2018, it is not necessary to remove its related links from the TeX Distribution Data structure. Warning: if you have other TeX distributions, they may have also installed files in /Library/TeX, so erasing this folder is then not a good idea. You will be asked to give an Administrator password. But if you must, locate /Library in the Finder and drag the subfolder TeX to the trash. This data structure takes very little space, so it makes little sense to erase it. Uninstalling the TeX Distribution Data Structure The GUI applications are in /Applications/TeX. But if you are trying to remove all traces of TeX, then remove texmf-local by dragging it to the trash. When MacTeX is installed, it doesn’t touch texmf-local if it already exists, but it creates an empty directory tree if none is present.Ĭonsequently, if you are updating TeX Live to a new version, you want to leave texmf-local alone.

These local additions are used by all versions of TeX Live, so if you added files for TeX Live 2018, they are still around for TeX Live 2019.

The folder texmf-local is available for local additions to TeX. You will need to provide an administrative password when asked. Drag the folder corresponding to the version of TeX Live you want to uninstall to the trash. You will see folders containing various copies of TeX Live. In the Finder’s Go menu, select “Go to Folder” in the resulting dialog window, type “/usr/local/texlive”. But it is easy to work around this problem. The only difficulty is that TeX Live is owned by root and lives in a location that is not commonly visible in the Finder. TeX Live 2018 is entirely contained in /usr/local/texlive/2018 the old TeX Live 2017 was in /usr/local/texlive/2017. Luckily, TeX Live is installed in a single directory on the Mac it is not scattered over several different places. The actual TeX distribution TeX Live is by far the largest piece of MacTeX.

However, it is fairly easy to remove most software installed by MacTeX. The Apple Installer does not support uninstalling files. Other users have MacTeX-2018 or another earlier distribution, upgrade to the latest version, and want to reclaim space by erasing the old distribution. Some casual users see TeX on the web, download it to experiment, decide that the program is not their cup of tea, and want to get rid of it. There are two reasons users want to uninstall. Install essential packages: tlmgr install collection-fontsrecommended Download package from More Packages - MacTeX - TeX Users Group

Install texlive 2018