Uninstalling Box Drive for MacOS

Northwestern University has switched to using Microsoft OneDrive in favor of Northwestern Box for personal document storage. This document is intended to help guide the uninstallation of Box Drive software.

Box must not be running in the background for uninstallation to complete successfully. To do so:

  1. Click the Box Drive icon from the menu bar and click Quit Box Drive.
    • You can check that Box Drive is fully closed by opening an instance of Activity Monitor and ensuring Box Drive does not appear among the list.

Some files may not have fully synced or uploaded to Box after its official cutoff date. It may be desirable to check for these and archive them accordingly prior to uninstalling Box Drive:

  1. Open Terminal and run fileproviderctl domain remove -A com.box.desktop.boxfileprovider; defaults delete com.box.desktop; rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Box/Box.
    • If you already have a ~/Box-Box (Archive) folder from a previous manual reset, the folder will be named ~/Box-Box (Archive) 2, or if that name is already taken, ~/Box-Box (Archive) 3, and so on.
  2. Run /Library/Application\ Support/Box/uninstall_box_drive.
  3. You will be required to enter your password without preview.
    • Press ENTER once you have finished typing it in.
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