Removing WiFind

The WiFind application from TastyApps has potential, but in the end it falls short and is not worth all of the bother. WiFind will slow down your computer nearly to a halt in some cases. Because the developers made it an input manager without a preference pane, it cannot easily be turned off. Even when it's running well, it still takes a click or two in order to get it to display the information you need.

The free application coconutWiFi is almost identical to WiFind, but because it's an application, it's much easier to install, load, unload, and uninstall.

Getting rid of WiFind can be a major pain (especially if it's in the process of grinding your machine to a halt at the time). The developers gave it an installer (because it's an input manager and not an application), but despite Apple's guidelines that all programs with installers must have uninstallers, they did not give it an uninstaller.

So, here's how I went about turning OFF WiFind. WiFind uses this InputManager called "SIMBL" to modify the wireless menu directly (rather than putting up its own menu, like coconutWiFi). So, you can either remove SIMBL or remove WiFind from SIMBL so that while SIMBL loads, WiFind will not.

To remove WiFind only, look for the folder

/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins

or the folder

~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins

where ~ is your home directory. Inside that folder, you'll find a WiFind.bundle. Move it somewhere else (or delete it) and logout (or restart) to disable/remove WiFind.

Alternatively/additionally, you can remove SIMBL. Look in the folder:

/Library/InputManagers

or

~/Library/InputManagers

where ~ is your home directory. There should be a SIMBL folder inside one of these. To remove SIMBL, delete the SIMBL folder. To disable it, remove the SIMBL folder. Again, be sure to logout or restart after making this change. When you're logged back in, SIMBL should not be loaded.

If you think you will want to turn this off later, simply move the SIMBL folder out of the InputManagers folder and into some other folder that you create (I created an InputManagersOff folder in my /Library). Next, if you logout (or restart), WiFind will not be started. At some time, you should probably also get rid of the folders

/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/

and

~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/

where ~ is your home directory.

You might notice that there are files dropped in /Library/Receipts (or maybe ~/Library/Receipts) from WiFind (or wifind) and SIMBL. You may consider removing these files too, but it won't hurt to leave them there.