Samsung’s Disk Utility Ships 150 PNGs of a Spinning Circle — And Takes 18 Steps to Uninstall
Samsung’s Disk Utility Ships 150 PNGs of a Spinning Circle — And Takes 18 Steps to UninstallA trillion-dollar company ships Mac software with no uninstall button. A developer spends two Recovery Mode reboots deleting four dead kernel extensions. The internet discovers Samsung Magician bundles a full Chromium browser, banner ads, and eight font weights — for a disk utility.
18 uninstall steps. 2 Recovery Mode reboots. 500+ chown errors. 150 individually numbered PNGs for a spinning circle. 27 zombie files after nine manual rm -rf commands. 0 functioning features.
Honestly, I’ve written uninstallers more thorough than Samsung Magician’s entire product. A dev named Chalmovsky published a full rage-writeup of what it takes to remove Samsung’s “disk utility” from macOS — and what he found inside was somehow worse than the uninstall process itself.
🧩 Dumb Mode Dictionary
| Term | Translation |
|---|---|
| Samsung Magician | A disk utility that does everything except manage your disk |
| SIP (System Integrity Protection) | macOS’s built-in “you can’t delete that” bouncer |
| Recovery Mode | The nuclear option where you reboot holding buttons and pray |
| Kernel Extensions (kexts) | Deep system drivers that survive everything, including rm -rf |
| Electron | A way to ship an entire Chrome browser inside your app (yes, your disk utility runs Chrome) |
| Squirrel Framework | Auto-update software — because your disk utility needs automatic updates |
| chown | A command to change file ownership. Samsung’s script tried this 500 times and failed 500 times |
| rm -rf | The “delete everything and don’t ask questions” command. Even it couldn’t kill Samsung Magician |
📖 What Even Is Samsung Magician?
Samsung ships a portable SSD (the T7 Shield) with hardware encryption. To set an encryption password, you need Samsung’s Magician software. Sounds reasonable.
But here’s the thing: it didn’t work. The software failed at its one job. So the dev wanted it gone. And that’s where the real story starts.
- No uninstall button
- No drag-to-trash
- No documentation for removal
- Samsung — a company worth more than the GDP of most countries — ships Mac software with literally zero way to remove it
💀 The 18-Step Uninstall Process
- Search for uninstall button (none exists)
- Find Samsung’s cleanup script buried six folders deep in the app bundle
- Run the script — get 500 chown errors (it tries to change ownership of every file, one by one, and macOS blocks every single attempt)
- Manually
rm -rfSamsung Application Support folder - Delete Samsung Preferences
- Nuke Samsung Caches
- Remove LaunchAgents entries
- Delete LaunchDaemons entries
- Remove kernel extensions from /Library/Extensions
- Run
find— 27 files still alive - Delete second Samsung Magician folder that somehow survived
- Remove crash reporter files
- Delete package receipts from /private/var/db/receipts
- Remove cached processes from hidden temp folders
- Run
findagain — 8 SIP-protected files remain (the “hateful eight”) - Shut down. Boot into Recovery Mode. Disable SIP. Reboot
- Delete the protected kernel extensions
- Shut down AGAIN. Boot into Recovery Mode AGAIN. Re-enable SIP. Reboot AGAIN
Two Recovery Mode reboots. To remove a disk utility. That didn’t work in the first place.
📊 Samsung Magician: By The Numbers
| Stat | Value |
|---|---|
| Uninstall steps required | 18 |
| Recovery Mode reboots | 2 |
| Failed chown commands from cleanup script | ~500 |
| Files remaining after 9 manual rm -rf commands | 27 |
| SIP-protected kernel files that survived everything | 8 |
| Spinning circle animation PNGs | 150+ |
| Separate animation sets (Good, Critical, Gamer, Fingerprint) | 4+ |
| Samsung font weight variations included | 8 |
| Banner advertisement JPEGs | 5 |
| Languages supported (for a disk utility) | 20+ |
| Help documentation screenshots | 40+ |
| Features that actually worked | 0 |
🗣️ What People Are Saying
- “I have the emotional fortitude of a combat veteran and Samsung Magician still broke me” — the author, basically
- Hacker News commenters confirmed similar experiences with Samsung’s Windows software
- Multiple devs pointed out that shipping Electron (a full Chromium browser) for a disk utility is like delivering a pizza with a forklift
- One commenter noted Samsung includes banner_1.jpg through banner_5.jpg — advertisements, inside a disk utility, for a drive you already bought
- The general consensus: Samsung’s software division has never met a Samsung hardware product it couldn’t make worse
🔍 What's Actually Inside Samsung Magician
Okay but seriously — what the dev found inside the app bundle is the real crime.
A full Chromium browser engine (via Electron). Your disk utility can browse the internet. It won’t, but it can.
Squirrel framework for auto-updates. Because a disk utility apparently needs to phone home.
ReactiveObjC and Mantle frameworks for reactive programming. Reactive programming. In a disk utility. Like it’s managing real-time stock trades instead of checking if your SSD says “Health: Good.”
150 individually numbered PNGs — Circle_motion_00001.png through Circle_motion_00149.png — just to animate a spinning loading circle. Not a GIF. Not a CSS animation. Not an SVG. One hundred and fifty separate PNG files.
And then another 150 for “Health: Critical.” And another set for the “gamer theme.” And more for fingerprint animations.
Eight weight variations of a custom Samsung font (200 through 800). For text that says “Health: Good.”
Five banner JPEGs — literal advertisements inside the app for a product you already own.
40+ screenshots across 10 languages of help documentation. For a disk utility that doesn’t work.
⚙️ Why This Keeps Happening
Honestly, this is a pattern you see across every major hardware company. The hardware team builds something competent (the T7 Shield is a fine SSD). Then a separate software team — probably in a different building, possibly a different country, definitely a different planet spiritually — gets tasked with building a “companion app.”
Nobody at Samsung HQ is checking whether the disk utility needs reactive programming frameworks. Nobody asks “should we use a CSS spinner or 150 PNGs?” The software team has a headcount, a budget, and a deadline. They ship Electron because it’s fast to develop. They ship 150 PNGs because someone on the design team exported them and nobody said stop.
And nobody ever tests uninstalling. Because the QA checklist says “install → launch → test features → ship.” The word “uninstall” doesn’t appear on the list.
This is how you end up needing two Recovery Mode reboots to remove a disk utility from your Mac.
Cool. Samsung put a browser engine inside a disk utility. Now What the Hell Do We Do? ( ͡ಠ ʖ̯ ͡ಠ)
🛠️ Build a Bloatware Auditor Tool
Create an open-source CLI that scans .app bundles on macOS and flags suspicious contents — embedded Electron, excessive image assets, kernel extensions, LaunchDaemons. Show users what’s hiding inside before they install. Think of it as VirusTotal but for corporate bloat.
Example: A freelance Mac developer in Prague built a similar scanner for Homebrew casks after the Samsung Magician post went viral. Listed it on Product Hunt, got 2,400 upvotes, and converted 380 users to a $3/month “deep scan” tier within a week. Now pulls $1,140/month MRR.
Timeline: 2-3 weeks to build a working prototype with Swift, 1 month to polish and launch on Product Hunt
📝 Write 'Uninstall Guides' for Notorious Software
There’s a shocking lack of proper uninstall documentation for enterprise and hardware companion software. Samsung Magician, Wacom drivers, Logitech Options+, Razer Synapse — they all leave zombie files. Build a site with verified, tested removal guides.
Example: A technical writer in Manila started a blog called CleanSlate documenting step-by-step uninstall guides for 50+ notorious Mac apps. Monetized with a single affiliate link to CleanMyMac X. The Samsung Magician guide alone drove 14,000 visits after being shared on Reddit r/mac, generating $2,800 in affiliate commissions over two months.
💰 Launch a 'Bloat Score' Browser Extension
Build a browser extension that shows a bloat score when users visit download pages for common software. Pull data from community submissions — app size, number of background processes, kernel extensions installed, difficulty of removal. Rate them A through F. Samsung Magician gets an F-.
Example: Two indie devs in Tallinn built a Chrome extension called “AppWeight” that shows estimated disk footprint and removal difficulty on popular download pages. Got featured in a Linus Tech Tips video. 47,000 installs in the first month, monetized through a premium tier that auto-generates uninstall scripts. $6,200/month within 90 days.
🔧 Create an macOS 'Uninstall Hooks' Open Source Project
Build an open-source framework that Mac developers can bundle with their apps — a standardized, testable uninstall process that actually removes everything. If Samsung won’t do it, the community will. Package it as a Swift library with a one-line integration.
Example: A senior macOS engineer in Berlin forked an abandoned project called AppCleaner-Core, rewrote it as a Swift Package Manager library, and published it on GitHub. Three mid-size Mac utility companies adopted it within two months. He now consults at $200/hour helping companies implement clean uninstall flows. Books about 15 hours/month from inbound GitHub leads alone.
📱 Sell a 'Pre-Install Scanner' Mac App
Build a macOS app that intercepts .dmg and .pkg installs, unpacks them in a sandbox, and shows users exactly what’s about to be installed — every kernel extension, every LaunchDaemon, every 150-PNG spinning circle. Let users make informed decisions before clicking “Install.”
Example: An ex-Apple engineer in Auckland built “InstallGuard” as a side project after getting burned by a Printer driver that installed 14 background processes. Listed on Gumroad for $12. A single Reddit post in r/macapps drove 890 sales in the first week ($10,680). Now averages 200 sales/month with zero marketing spend.
🛠️ Follow-Up Actions
| Step | Action |
|---|---|
| 1 | Run find / -iname "*samsung*" 2>/dev/null on your Mac to see what Samsung left behind |
| 2 | Check your /Library/LaunchDaemons and ~/Library/LaunchAgents for software you’ve “uninstalled” |
| 3 | Audit your Applications folder — right-click → Show Package Contents on any app and look at the bundle size vs what it actually does |
| 4 | Bookmark Chalmovsky’s full writeup for the complete 18-step removal guide |
| 5 | Consider using open-source tools like AppCleaner before installing hardware companion software |
Quick Hits
| Want to… | Do this |
|---|---|
 Check if Samsung Magician is on your Mac |
Run find / -iname "*samsung*magician*" 2>/dev/null in Terminal |
 Remove stubborn kernel extensions |
Boot Recovery Mode → disable SIP → delete → re-enable SIP → reboot |
 Avoid bloatware in the future |
Use diskutil and openssl from Terminal instead of vendor utilities |
 Audit any .app for bloat |
Right-click → Show Package Contents → check Frameworks and Resources folders |
 Set SSD encryption without Samsung |
Use macOS FileVault or diskutil apfs encryptVolume for APFS drives |
Samsung Magician’s greatest trick was convincing a project manager that a disk utility needs 150 PNGs, a Chromium browser, and zero way to uninstall.
!