Note: This was written in 2015, it may be out of date now.
There are a lot of commands here which I use
sudoif you don't know what you're doing withsudo, especially where Irmyou can severely screw up your system.
There are many reasons which you would want to remove a piece of software such as McAfee, such as not wanting it to hammer your CPU during work hours which seems like primetime for a virus scan.
I intend this to be a living document, I have included suggestions from peoples' replies.
You can attempt to uninstall, but it may not work randomly. There's an uninstaller you can download, it never worked properly for me.
/Library/McAfee/agent/scripts/uninstall.sh
/usr/local/McAfee/fmp/bin/unInstallFMP
sudo /usr/local/McAfee/uninstall EPM
All Modules
sudo /usr/local/McAfee/uninstall EPM
Threat Prevention Module
sudo /usr/local/McAfee/uninstall ThreatPrevention
Firewall Module
sudo /usr/local/McAfee/uninstall Firewall
Web Control Module
sudo /usr/local/McAfee/uninstall WebControl
There are both local and root level launchd services. Thanks @rynosoft for finding some more which I missed.
launchctl stop com.mcafee.menulet
launchctl stop com.mcafee.reporter
launchctl remove com.mcafee.menulet
launchctl remove com.mcafee.reporter
sudo su -
launchctl stop com.mcafee.virusscan.fmpd
launchctl stop com.mcafee.ssm.ScanManager
launchctl stop com.mcafee.virusscan.ssm.ScanFactory
launchctl stop com.mcafee.ssm.Eupdate
launchctl stop com.mcafee.agent.macompat
launchctl stop com.mcafee.agent.ma
launchctl stop com.mcafee.agent.macmn
launchctl remove com.mcafee.virusscan.fmpd
launchctl remove com.mcafee.ssm.ScanManager
launchctl remove com.mcafee.virusscan.ssm.ScanFactory
launchctl remove com.mcafee.ssm.Eupdate
launchctl remove com.mcafee.agent.macompat
launchctl remove com.mcafee.agent.ma
launchctl remove com.mcafee.agent.macmn
As this document may be out of date by the time you find it, try these to find more mcafee garbage.
launchctl list | grep mcafee
sudo launchctl list | grep mcafee
You can use similar steps as above to stop and remove them.
Aside from the services, there will be a shit-ton of files left on the file system.
You can search and destroy mcafee stuff with this:
find / -name "com.mcafee*" -exec rm {} \; -print
You may not have access to all of those files, you can sudo find... to elevate your privileges.
Per @jlevy if you are using TimeMachine, you'll want to ignore those back-ups.
sudo find / -name "*MobileBackup*" -prune -or -name "com.mcafee*" -print > /tmp/to-delete
You can cat /tmp/to-delete to show what you should delete.
Per @javaswinger consider finding just *mcafee* instead of com.mcafee* for a more complete list.
sudo find / -type f -name '*mcafee*' -print
Per @TimLethbridge you can fix mcafee's runaway process by modifying some permissions.
cd /usr/local
sudo chown -R root McAfee
sudo reboot
@alexellis asked how to block corp policies from re-installing McAfee.
This is outside of the scope of this document. If you are on a corporate network screwing around with policies may result in a strong lecture or even cost you your job, depending on your field.
I have some theories involving setting up non-domain level users on the system, but I don't have a lab to do the testing and I primarily use Linux now, so I don't care enough try it.
Per @dneto82
rm /Applications/Utilities/McAfee\ ePO\ Remote\ Provisioning\ Tool.app/
Fuck McAfee.
This script made by someone on the McAfee forums in 2016 has never failed me, even with Big Sur in 2021.
https://community.mcafee.com/nysyc36988/attachments/nysyc36988/mac-and-linux/1421/1/RipOff_McAfee.sh.zip
in article
https://community.mcafee.com/t5/Mac-and-Linux-Products/How-to-remove-McAfee-ES-v-10-2-1-from-macOS-Sierra/m-p/520265/highlight/true#M1421
If it doesn't run you have to make sure to set executable permissions on the file with "sudo chmod 755"
Copy file to computer, open terminal, go to folder, sudo chmod 755 RipOff_McAfee.sh, sudo ./RipOff_McAfee.sh
It outputs a log of what it does, and usually is removing the same LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemons this post reports.