How to uninstall OpenCore Legacy Patcher

#What do you want to remove?

#Remove everything: back to native macOS

1. Back up

   Make a Time Machine backup. The disk will be erased.

2. Get the newest macOS Apple supports for your Mac

   Create a USB installer for it (any 16 GB or larger drive, using Apple's createinstallmedia), or use Internet Recovery: start the Mac holding Cmd+Option+R. Internet Recovery may not offer the newest supported version. The Mac Checker shows which version is the newest for your model.

3. Boot the installer and erase the whole disk

   Start holding Option and choose the installer (not EFI Boot). In Disk Utility choose View > Show All Devices, select the top disk entry and click Erase. This also removes OpenCore from the internal EFI partition.

4. Install macOS

   Install as usual.

5. Reset NVRAM

   Restart once more and reset NVRAM (hold Option+Cmd+P+R for about 20 seconds at startup). OpenCore leaves variables in NVRAM that can confuse the Mac otherwise, for example by sending it into Recovery repeatedly.

#Revert the root patches

Open OpenCore Legacy Patcher, choose Post-Install Root Patch, then Revert Root Patches, and restart. macOS returns to the last sealed (unmodified) snapshot of the system.

• Works on macOS Monterey and newer. Big Sur cannot revert snapshots: reinstall Big Sur over itself instead (same or newer version, no erase).
• Without root patches, a patched Mac usually has no graphics acceleration, and may have no Wi-Fi or sound.
• If the Mac does not boot at all after patching, revert from Recovery: see Stuck on boot after root patching.

#Uninstall the app

Download OpenCore-Patcher-Uninstaller.pkg from the same GitHub release and open it. We ran the 3.0.0-rc.5 uninstaller and read its script. It removes:

/Applications/OpenCore-Patcher.app                      (the symbolic link)
/Library/Application Support/Dortania/OpenCore-Patcher.app
/Library/Application Support/Dortania/Update.plist
/Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/com.dortania.opencore-legacy-patcher.privileged-helper
/Library/LaunchAgents/com.dortania.opencore-legacy-patcher*   (if present)
/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.dortania.opencore-legacy-patcher*  (if present)

What stays, which you can delete by hand if you want a clean slate:

• The empty folder /Library/Application Support/Dortania.
• App settings: /Users/Shared/.com.dortania.opencore-legacy-patcher.plist.
• Logs: ~/Library/Logs/Dortania/.
• Downloaded Kernel Debug Kits in /Library/Developer/KDKs (can be several GB).
• OpenCore and the root patches. The uninstaller “does not revert any patches installed”, as the release notes say.

Dragging the app to the Trash does not remove the privileged helper; use the uninstaller.

#Remove OpenCore from an EFI partition

1. Find and mount the EFI partition

   In Terminal, list disks and find the EFI partition of the drive (usually disk0s1 for the internal disk):

   TerminalCopy

   > diskutil list
   > sudo diskutil mount disk0s1

2. Delete only OpenCore's folders

   In /Volumes/EFI, delete the EFI/OC folder and the System folder. On 5K iMacs, also delete boot.efi at the root of the partition. Do not delete the whole EFI folder: it may contain Windows or Linux boot files (Dortania).

3. Reset NVRAM and restart

   Reset NVRAM at the next startup (Option+Cmd+P+R).

#Common questions

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