Uninstalling macOS system extensions

With the ongoing change from kernel extensions to system extensions, one new thing Mac admins will need to learn is how to uninstall system extensions. Fortunately, Apple has provided a tool as of macOS Catalina that assists with this: systemextensionsctl

If you run the systemextensionsctl command by itself, you should get the following information about usage:

systemextensionsctl: usage:
	systemextensionsctl developer [on|off]
	systemextensionsctl list [category]
	systemextensionsctl reset  - reset all System Extensions state
	systemextensionsctl uninstall  ; can also accept '-' for teamID

The last verb, uninstall, is what allows us to remove system extensions. For more details, please see below the jump.

To uninstall a system extension using systemextensionsctl, you need to provide the following:

• Team identifier of the certificate used to sign the system extension
• Bundle identifier for the system extension

Locating Team and bundle identifiers

You can identify team and bundle identifiers by locating the system extension in question inside the application and running the following commands:

To identify the Team identifier:

codesign -dvvv /path/to/name_goes_here.systemextension 2>&1 | awk -F= '/^TeamIdentifier/ {print $NF}'

To identify the bundle identifier:

codesign -dvvv /path/to/name_goes_here.systemextension 2>&1 | awk -F= '/^Identifier/ {print $NF}'

For example, Microsoft Defender ATP currently has several system extensions within its application bundle:

• /Applications/Microsoft Defender ATP.app/Contents/Library/SystemExtensions/com.microsoft.wdav.epsext.systemextension
• /Applications/Microsoft Defender ATP.app/Contents/Library/SystemExtensions/com.microsoft.wdav.netext.systemextension
• /Applications/Microsoft Defender ATP.app/Contents/Library/SystemExtensions/com.microsoft.wdav.tunnelext.systemextension

To find the bundle identifier for the com.microsoft.wdav.epsext.systemextension system extension, run the command shown below:

codesign -dvvv "/Applications/Microsoft Defender ATP.app/Contents/Library/SystemExtensions/com.microsoft.wdav.epsext.systemextension" 2>&1 | awk -F= '/^Identifier/ {print $NF}'

That should give you the following output:

username@computername ~ % codesign -dvvv "/Applications/Microsoft Defender ATP.app/Contents/Library/SystemExtensions/com.microsoft.wdav.epsext.systemextension" 2>&1 | awk -F= '/^Identifier/ {print $NF}'
com.microsoft.wdav.epsext
username@computername ~ %

To find the Team identifier for the com.microsoft.wdav.epsext.systemextension system extension, run the command shown below:

codesign -dvvv "/Applications/Microsoft Defender ATP.app/Contents/Library/SystemExtensions/com.microsoft.wdav.epsext.systemextension" 2>&1 | awk -F= '/^TeamIdentifier/ {print $NF}'

That should give you the following output:

username@computername ~ % codesign -dvvv "/Applications/Microsoft Defender ATP.app/Contents/Library/SystemExtensions/com.microsoft.wdav.epsext.systemextension" 2>&1 | awk -F= '/^TeamIdentifier/ {print $NF}'
UBF8T346G9
username@computername ~ %

Uninstalling a system extension

Once you have both, you can run the following command with root privileges to uninstall a system extension:

systemextensionsctl uninstall Team_Identifier_Goes_Here Bundle_Identifier_Goes_Here

For example, if you wanted to uninstall Microsoft Defender’s com.microsoft.wdav.epsext.systemextension system extension, you would run the following command with root privileges:

systemextensionsctl uninstall UBF8T346G9 com.microsoft.wdav.epsext

Note: As of September 1, 2020, running the systemextensionsctl uninstall command requires System Integrity Protection (SIP) to be disabled. This limitation is supposed to be removed by Apple at some point in the very near future.