How to uninstall i4Tools (爱思助手) on Mac

爱思助手 (i4Tools) is an iPhone management tool, and the one folder on your Mac that may hold something you want is ~/Library/Application Support/爱思助手. It carries the app's Chinese name on every Mac, even one set to English, where Finder shows the app as i4Tools. The test connected no iPhone and made no backup, so it does not show where 爱思助手 saves backups, downloaded firmware or exported files; if you used it for any of those, find them and copy what you want before you remove anything. This guide covers the official installer package, which installs i4Tools.app and leaves a package receipt named cn.i4tools.mac.

See what the package installed

Before removing anything, these read-only commands show the receipt and the files it recorded:

pkgutil --pkgs | grep -i i4tools
pkgutil --files cn.i4tools.mac | head -20

The receipt id is all lowercase, while the app's own id is cn.i4Tools.mac. No output from the first command means no receipt is on this Mac, for example because the app was copied rather than installed.

Quit it completely

  1. Quit 爱思助手 from its menu.
  2. Open Activity Monitor and search for i4Tools. In the test it ran as the main process plus four QtWebEngine helper processes, which Mole's Status page folded into one row of about 2.0 GB.

In the test, 爱思助手 had restarted itself in the background and Mole did not show it as running, so confirm with pgrep in the checks below rather than trusting the app list.

Remove the app

  1. Move i4Tools.app, normally in Applications, to the Trash, as described in Apple's Delete or uninstall apps on Mac. It was installed by a package, so macOS may ask for an administrator password.
  2. Open ~/Library/Application Support/爱思助手 with Shift + Command + G, look through it, and move it to the Trash only once you have kept what you need.
  3. Optionally, drop the package receipt. It holds no files, only the install record, so this changes nothing else:
sudo pkgutil --forget cn.i4tools.mac

Use the lowercase spelling; pkgutil --forget matches the id exactly.

Where 爱思助手 keeps its data

These locations come from the recorded test; 爱思助手 does not publish a list of them.

Location What it holds What to do
i4Tools.app, normally in Applications The app, 619.9 MB in the test Remove
~/Library/Application Support/爱思助手 The app's own data folder, named in Chinese on every Mac Look inside first, remove it when you are sure
~/Library/Preferences/cn.i4Tools.mac.plist Settings Remove
Receipt cn.i4tools.mac The package's install record, no files Forget it, or leave it
/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/i4Tools_*.diag Diagnostic reports macOS wrote for it Optional; they do not affect anything

Check the result

pgrep -lf i4Tools.app
pkgutil --pkgs | grep -i i4tools
ls -d ~/Library/Application\ Support/爱思助手 ~/Library/Preferences/cn.i4Tools.mac.plist
  • No output from pgrep means nothing from the app is running. A line means the main process or one of its helpers is still alive; quit it, or restart the Mac once.
  • cn.i4tools.mac in the second command's output means the receipt is still there. That is harmless; forget it with the command above if you want the record gone.
  • For ls -d, "No such file or directory" means that path is gone. A printed path is still on disk; if it is the data folder, that is your decision to make.

What Mole lists

For 爱思助手 from the official package:

  • ~/Library/Preferences/cn.i4Tools.mac.plist and the app's temporary cache folder are selected by default.
  • ~/Library/Application Support/爱思助手 is listed but not selected. On an English Mac the name comes from the app's Chinese strings, and on a Chinese Mac it is the display name; either way Mole leaves the choice to you.
  • After the app is gone, Mole forgets the cn.i4tools.mac receipt using the receipt's own lowercase spelling. It does this only when the uninstall already used its administrator helper, and it never removes files through the receipt.
  • The test showed no login items or launch agents for it, and Mole found no update channel it could check.

What this test covered

On September 25, 2026, 爱思助手 9.10.018 was installed from the official package and uninstalled with Mole 1.15 Preview build 290. While it ran, Status showed it as one row with five processes, about 2.0 GB. The app, 619.9 MB, its preferences and its temporary cache went to the Trash. Two i4Tools_*.diag reports under /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports were skipped, because they matched a whitelist entry on the test Mac. Two things stayed: ~/Library/Application Support/爱思助手, which that build did not list on an English-first Mac, and the receipt, whose forget failed because of the difference in case. Both were fixed in Mole's code after the test and have not been rechecked against the official package. The app had restarted itself shortly before, Mole showed it as recently opened rather than running, and the removal went through with its processes exiting normally. No iPhone was connected, nothing was backed up, and no account was used.