Permanently Disable iTunes on OS X

So this isn’t really the normal theme for my articles. However I’ve reloaded the OS on my MacBook Pro the other day, because my factory hard drive died within 8 months of buying the MacBook. I replaced it with a 256GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD and reloaded the OS via net-install (Apple+R on boot.)

About 3-4 days later iTunes decided to open itself over and over every 20 minutes to remind me to accept it’s license agreement. I don’t use iTunes and have no need to accept the agreement, furthermore I don’t like that it pops up again immediately after I hit decline, then again 20 minutes later. Plus it runs in the background and wastes resources while trying to coax you into using it.

I remember trying to just delete the iTunes app, but I found that taking it one step higher is the permanent solution to OS X iTunes spam:

First you’re going to want to open the Terminal application. Once in the Terminal window, type:

sudo su -

You will be prompted for your password, enter it and press return.

Now that you’re the root user, you can permanently disable iTunes as follows:

cd /Applications
mv iTunes.app /var/root/omgitooonz.app 
mkdir iTunes.app
chmod 000 iTunes.app
chflags simmutable iTunes.app

Now the iTunes.app directory exists, but it’s been set to permission level 000 and flagged as immutable. Even the root user can’t write to it, without first removing the immutable flag. This will prevent iTunes from being re-installed and annoying you ever again (or at least until you re-format and re-install OS X.)

If iTunes is still running in the background you can kill it via Terminal or via the Activity Monitor application, or by rebooting.

Add a Comment