Multiple Applications folders - cleaning it up

[Kemik]

Hi all,

My dad upgraded his iMac yesterday and I noticed he has his regular Applications folder located in / and then another Applications folder in ~/user/Applications.

I note the user/Applications folder is used on my MBP for steam games, which is fine. However on his iMac it seems like there are duplicates for almost every application, including the stock applications like Address book.

How's the best way to figure out which Applications he has been using and is it safe to delete the other copy? I.e. they're not mirrored and use the same data source are they? Would it be best doing a straight drag and drop or use an Application deletion program? Normally I'd use the later but I don't want it deleting data relating to the correct application too.

I want to resist working from a fresh, which is probably the best option, as it means messing with a lot of photography program settings that he has personalised.

Cheers for the help!

 

[PardonTheWait]

Some apps will be working from plist files (most of them probably) so it *should* be those that are important not the .app files themselves. Hard to be sure though. If possible open both apps and see if they behave the same - if they do, move/delete one and check the one in the main apps folder is still ok, then delete it.

If they behave differently keep the one that's right and move it to the main apps folder.

I'd expect the vast majority of them to work from user specific .plist files though, especially Apple/system apps

Also definitely don't use anything like AppZapper - that'll delete the associated files and preferences which is completely the opposite of what you want. You just want to have one .app file where you currently have two, one of which is redundant!

Basically every app there's two of... one of those is spare. You want to find out which (in most cases it won't matter) and bin it. If you're halfway careful it should be really really hard to do any damage here