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Uninstalling Box Drive

Box Drive , End User , Article , Product Utilization , Established , Instruction

Follow the instructions below to uninstall Box Drive

Windows:

IMPORTANT
Any content in your Box Drive desktop location that has not yet successfully been uploaded to Box is deleted from your machine during the uninstall process. Be certain all of your content is uploaded to Box before proceeding. 
  1. Quit Box Drive
  2. Uninstall the application in the Control Panel.

Before removing all traces of Box Drive from your machine, first ensure that all hidden folders are visible.
To view hidden files and folders in Windows:

  1. In the Windows taskbar, open File Explorer.
  2. At the top of the File Explorer window, click View.
  3. In the View menubar, click Options and select Change folder and search options.
  4. At the top of tthe Folder Options window, click the View tab.
  5. In Advanced settings, check Show hidden files, folders, and drives.
  6. At the bottom of the window, click OK.

To remove all traces of the Box Drive application from your machine:

  1. Go to C:\ProgramData\Box and delete the Box subfolder.
  2. Open Registry Editor and delete HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Box\Box.
  3. Go to C:\Users\[USER]\AppData\Local\Box and delete the Box subfolder.
  4. Open Registry Editor and delete HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Box\Box.
  5. If the machine has multiple user accounts, login using each user account and repeat steps 3 and  4.

 

Mac:

macOS 11+:

  1. Quit Box Drive if it is running.
  2. Download and open the Box Reset Tool zip file.
  3. Open the Box Reset Tool from the Downloads folder.
  4. Select Uninstall and then Continue when prompted to confirm the uninstallation.
  5. Enter your credentials to continue with the uninstalling Box if prompted. 
  6. Select OK to close out the tool. 

Note: The Box Reset Tool will write logs of actions performed to your Desktop folder under “Box-ResetTool-logs_(<current day>)”.

For earlier macOS versions or if there are any issues with the above process, follow these alternative steps to reset Box Drive.

  1. Quit Box Drive
  2. Open a Terminal window and run the appropriate command based on your macOS version and Box Drive version:
    macOS 11.x  and macOS 14.x with any version of Box Drive
    fileproviderctl domain remove -A com.box.desktop.boxfileprovider; defaults delete com.box.desktop; rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Box/Box

    macOS 12.x and macOS 13.x with Box Drive version 2.35 and earlier
    /Applications/Box.app/Contents/MacOS/fpe/streem --remove-fpe-domain-and-archive-unsynced-content Box ; defaults delete com.box.desktop; rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Box/Box

    macOS 12.x and macOS 13.x with Box Drive 2.36 and newer
    /Applications/Box.app/Contents/MacOS/fpe/streem --remove-fpe-domain-and-preserve-unsynced-content Box ; defaults delete com.box.desktop; rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Box/Box

    This command will:

    • Archive all files that are not synced (not uploaded to Box) from ~/Library/CloudStorage/Box-Box and move it to a new folder at:
      • ~/Box-Box (Archive) (macOS 11.x)

        Note

        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.

      • ~/Library/CloudStorage/Box-Box (<current day and time>) (macOS 12.x and newer)
    • Exclude from the above archive files that are “up-to-date” or synced on Box
    • Re-create the parent hierarchy of the archived files
  3. While still in the Terminal window, now run the uninstaller script:
    • Type the following and press Enter: 
      /Library/Application\ Support/Box/uninstall_box_drive

You do not see your password as you enter it. Just press ENTER when you have finished typing it in.

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