how to detect files related to an app on a mac

I am wondering how an application li开发者_Go百科ke appzapper can detect the files related to an application?

All ideas are welcome.

Thanks for your help,

Regards,

By looking into the standard locations that usually are used by applications to store preferences (like Library/Preferences/ , Library/Caches, etc., both in your home directory ~/ and under / ) I couldn´t find any file or folder that isn´t using either the applications name (eg. ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox) or it´s bundle identifier (eg. ~/Library/Preferences/org.mozilla.firefox.plist) in its name; so I guess they´re just using that.

In the case of AppZapper you can go ahead and try for any (not currently running) Application to rename the ~/Library/Application Support/AppName folder for example to ~/Library/Application Support/111AppName - AppZapper doesn´t find it anymore. If you change it to ~/Library/Application Support/AppName111 it shows up as a related file.

Out of this you can conclude that there isn´t any magical linkage between a folder full of preferences and it´s associated application that AppZapper is reading out, it´s merely checking for folders starting with the Application´s Name.