Full and clean uninstall of Cydia apps?

[Surfinette]

Hi,

Yesterday I experienced the following:
I purchased ikeywiHD keyboard on the Cydia store, installed it, tweaked it to my liking... but found some bugs and didn't like the small size of the keys (not the subject of this post).
I therefore decided to uninstalled the app, which I did through the Cydia store.
Then one hour later, I thought I would give ikeywiHD another try, so I installed the app a second time... and was surprise to find that I didn't have to tweak the app again: all my tweaks and preferences were restored exactly as I had set them during the first install...
My conclusion, but maybe I'm wrong, is that despite having uninstalled ikeywiHD, my settings/preferenced remained stored somewhere in the ipad, which, if true, I don't like at all (it reminds me of Windows!)

Here are my questions:
1) When I uninstall an app from the Cydia store, is everything removed from the ipad (including settings and preferences)?
2) If the answer to question (1) is NO, then how do I clean-uninstall apps, ie how do I remove everything?
3) If the answer to question (1) is YES, then, just out of curiosity, how come my settings are restored during a second install?

 

[Mickey330]

A lot of the time, the .plist of the Cydia tweak will be left on the iDevice, even after a delete. I don't know the particulars or how, or why, but I know that it happens. I would assume that it's left in case you reinstall the tweak and then don't have to reconfigure the tweak. But, that's just a guess.

If you wish to remove those .plists and have a way to access the iPad file system (such as with iFile or SSHing in), they can be found at /Library/PreferenceLoader/Preferences.

Just a word of caution: Don't remove the plists of those tweaks you have still installed. I have never done that, but I would bet that the result would not be good. As always, be cautious when mucking about in the iPad's innards.

Hope this helps and clarifies.

Marilyn

 

[Surfinette]

Thank you for your quick and useful answer Marilyn,
You solved my problem.
I have iFile, and found the .plists (actually in this directory /Library/Preferences).

And then another small question... is this the same with regular AppStore apps? Do they leave .plists files behind when removed (or other files elsewhere in the ipad file system)?

 

[Gzoladz]

Good one! I always wondered how to do this but never found it critical enough to ask.

Thanks for the question and the answer

 

[Mickey330]

Thank you for your quick and useful answer Marilyn,
You solved my problem.
I have iFile, and found the .plists (actually in this directory /Library/Preferences).

And then another small question... is this the same with regular AppStore apps? Do they leave .plists files behind when removed (or other files elsewhere in the ipad file system)?

As far as I can tell, no, the plists for the app store apps are gone. I guess they get made differently. Each app is in its own folder under /Applocation (from the iFile Home) and the plist is in that folder. So, I can only assume that when you delete the app, you are deleting the whole folder, to include that app's plist.

At least, that's my guess because the only apps I see in iFile are the only ones I actually have installed.

Marilyn