How the Zoom macOS installer does its job without you clicking ‘install’

Two questions this raises, for me at least:

How do I know I’ve completely uninstalled all the things Zoom installed?

And, if Zoom provided a separate uninstaller (like many apps do) and it was verified to purge all of the stuff they installed (along with the uninstaller); would that appease people's concerns?

For now I’m sticking with the iOS app for video & their web-based experience for desktop sharing...

A previous version of Zoom installed a web server on MacOS without telling you, and left it there after the uninstall process. So the answer is no, you can't be sure.

Oh, and there was a known vulnerability in the web server that allowed remote access to your camera. The company claimed this was all intentional and was a feature and refused to remediate it for months. Eventually Apple issues a system update that removed the web server.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/zoom-webca...

Part of the benefit of macOS apps is that you can just put them in the trash and they're gone. Breaking that contract isn't like awful but it is frustrating.

I think it's interesting to see the outcry when Apple poses new restrictions in the application distribution process (like signing and sandboxing) but conversely the same cries go up when there is an App that seems to be abusing loose control mechanisms.

I think a lot of power users rightfully feel they are belittled by sandboxes and application restrictions. But seeing that they are not the major userbase and most Apps don't really need any permissions at all for their intended purpose (the user's purpose at least) I think Apple is moving in the right direction.

If you have Homebrew installed, you can run `brew cask zap zoomus` to get rid of all the things (as far as we know) Zoom has installed.

If you prefer to remove it manually, here’s the list of files and folders Homebrew will delete on `brew cask zap zoomus`:

https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/blob/a6026e0a36c22...

It's possible to things wrong in more than one way.

Your list seems to be missing a couple of files that the Zoom uninstaller cleans up.

That's deliberate. Homebrew always runs the Zoom uninstaller first before going through the list.

Running the uninstaller is enforced by the `pkg` declaration. See also: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/blob/a6026e0a36c22...