Uninstall Saft. For good. Really.

If you're here, you know what I'm talk­ing about. The Safari plu­gin sounds like a neat lit­tle tool but is a pesky cus­tomer on any com­puter. Not the way to win hearts. Delet­ing it doesn't work, not do the instruc­tions on their website.

Here is how I did.

  1. First, close Safari. This is VERY impor­tant, as it does not work otherwise.
  2. Start Ter­mi­nal. (Go to Appli­ca­tions -> Util­i­ties -> Ter­mi­nal, or type Ter­mi­nal in Spotlight).
  3. Under Ter­mi­nal type "sudo –s" with­out the quo­ta­tion marks to log in as root.
  4. Then enter:
    defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
  5. Go to the blue (or gray) apple at the top left of the screen, then select Force Quit. From the menu of items, click on "Saft" and click on the Force Quit button.
  6. Then, in the same Force Quit win­dow, click on "Finder" and click the "Relaunch" button.
  7. In the Finder win­dow, on the top right bar (the Fil­ter spot­light bar), type "saft" with­out the quotes. Delete with delight any file called Saft. Note: This may reveal a few other files that may con­tain the word "Saft" such as threads.py in my case (a Python file). Nat­u­rally, you want to NOT delete these. Just get rid of the Saft files.
  8. Empty the trash. If there is a file that won't delete because it's in use, then Force Quit "Saft" again as in Step 5 above, and then Empty Trash again.
  9. Go back into Ter­mi­nal, and type "sudo –s" again with­out quo­ta­tion marks. Then enter:
     defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE

    This will set the Finder back to the way it was before. Then type "exit" and it will exit out of the root.

  10. Now nav­i­gate to the folder: /Library/InputManagers. Note that this is NOT the "Library" folder in your Users folder. This is the Library folder from the root. Inside Input­Man­agers is the "saft" folder — get rid of it.
  11. Empty Trash (again). If it says Saft is in use, reboot the machine and empty it then. Or if you use some excel­lent util­ity like Main­Menu you can "Force Empty Trash".

Go back to your happy, prob­lem free Mac!  :)

  • http://eolake.blogspot.com Eolake

    Just remov­ing the two files in the Finder worked for me.

  • AL

    Thank-you!!!
    Worked smoothly…cheers

  • Kat

    Thanks!!!!

  • Patrick

    Thanks, I was really in need of it.

  • Toto547

    Thank you SO much!

  • john

    Found that I didn't need to sudo for the defaults write com­mands. God solu­tion though — it works.

  • Deb­o­rah Chang

    Thank you as well! Please add this sim­ple solu­tion as well: Nav­i­gate to Mac­in­tosh HD > Library > Input­Man­agers and delete Saft from there.

  • chris

    after I type sudo –s I get the pass­word which I enter. I then get bash-3.2#. Then I can do any­thing. Can you clarify?

  • Squirrley1414

    thank you for this!

  • Chris Row­land

    now that there is a new ver­sion of Safari, the fol­low­ing worked for me:
    upgrade Safari
    quit Safari
    search for Saft
    delete Saft
    open Safari -
    PRESTO!

  • Pingback: How to Full Screen Firefox, Safari browsers in Mac | Netster's blog()

  • Abhi Beck­ert

    You shouldn't need the sudo –s com­mand at all, and it's dan­ger­ous (a small typo could trash your sys­tem). You really should remove that step.

  • Karim

    Thanks!

  • "#"natalie.cook Natalie

    I got rid of Saft by using AppZap­per. Noth­ing else would work for me

  • tom(dB)

    You can force empty (or Secure Empty) trash by hold­ing 'cmd' and right click­ing on trash icon.

  • Not Saft

    I can't get past "5." Saft does not even show there.

  • Tobi

    Thank you, very help­ful to get rid of this annoy­ing thing.

  • Frank

    If Saft is installed as a SIMBL plu­gin (third option) remov­ing it only requires delet­ing the Saft.bundle folder from /Library/Application\ Support/SIMBL/Plugins/ no admin­is­tra­tor rights required 😉

  • Vince Greco

    Never showed up in Force Quit

    Noth­ing worked until I saw the last post from Frank-it was a SIMBL

    may be ok now

    Don't see a nag yet and Safari pref­er­ences doesn't show Saft

  • Felix

    Thanks! Saft was killing my system!

  • Jimmy

    I worked out what needed to be done another route, but it's the same as Frank's reply above. Restarted Safari, and the nag that it's not com­pat­i­ble with Safari 5.1 on Lion is no more