How to Remove Third-Party Accounts Like Facebook From Your Mac

Friday May 4, 2018 4:10 AM PDT by Tim Hardwick
With the release of iOS 11, Apple nixed its built-in integration with Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and Vimeo, a feature that allowed iPhone and iPad users to store their third-party account information and access it within apps that needed to use those services.


The equivalent feature remains in macOS High Sierra, although Apple has removed it completely from macOS 10.14 Mojave, which many users are likely to welcome in light of the recent data scandal.. While we wait for macOS Mojave to be released in the fall, this article shows you how to manually remove third-party accounts like Facebook from Macs running macOS 10.13.

Note that the following guide only deletes associated third-party accounts at the system level of your Mac – you'll still be able to access your Facebook account and related data by logging into Facebook.com (where you can delete your account permanently) or via the official iOS app, for example.

How to Remove Third-Party Accounts From macOS


  1. Click the Apple symbol () in the menu bar on your Mac's desktop and select System Preferences....

  2. Click the Internet Accounts preference pane.

  3. Click an account in the left column that you want to remove.

  4. Click the minus (–) button at the bottom of the column.
  5. Click OK in the "Are you sure..?" dialog.

  6. You may be asked if you want to keep any contacts related to the account stored in your iCloud Contacts. To nuke those too, click Delete from Mac.


Related Roundups: macOS High Sierra, macOS Mojave
Tag: Facebook
16 comments


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C DM
14 weeks ago

I am very surprised that Apple even let them integrate in the first place. Common sense kicked in later and it was removed. If Steve Jobs was around he would not have allowed for it to be integrated.

How would we know what Steve Jobs would do?
Rating: 2 Votes
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bergert
15 weeks ago
Delete account LOL - I never signed up!
Rating: 1 Votes
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TallGuyGT
15 weeks ago
I actually like having the Mac integration, primarily because it downloads profile pictures of my contacts from social media (LinkedIn preferred). Makes using Messages much easier.

The notifications are hit and miss. I think the sites intentionally make it hard to moderate the number of notifications. But easy to dismiss and often helpful.
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That’s not permanent however. If you ever restore the OS, or buy a new Mac and setup as new, those accounts come back. So how do we delete them for real?

Delete them from System Prefernces, then go into Keychain Access to delete any references. It’s hit or miss - it can often be a challenge to delete system-type data from iCloud. I have old passwords reappear that I’ve deleted many times.

A brute force method is to clear the iCloud Keychain, sign out of all your iCloud devices, and then change your password. This has been more effective for me in clearing iCloud data that doesn’t have a direct way of deleting.
Rating: 1 Votes
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stylinexpat
15 weeks ago
Great move by Apple by getting rid of Facebook. Zuckerberg can not be trusted. Getting rid of spy apps integrated into IOS was a great move by Apple. Should never have been integrated in the first place. Those that want the are free to download the app on their own from the App Store.
Rating: 1 Votes
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Morgenland
15 weeks ago

As TallGuyGT has said, try the new password method. Although, don''t be surprised to see them reappear randomly when they want... if they want, where they want...


whoever wants ;-)
Rating: 1 Votes
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randomgeeza
15 weeks ago
As TallGuyGT has said, try the new password method. Although, don''t be surprised to see them reappear randomly when they want... if they want, where they want...
Rating: 1 Votes
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