Get Seesmic Desktop 2 to Work on Mac OS X

Most people are having no problem installing Seesmic Desktop 2, but a small set of Mac OS X users are running into a common error. When they attempt to install the program from Seesmic’s website they are presented with the following error message: “Application can’t be installed.”

Here is how to fix the problem:

1. Microsoft Silverlight, not SD2, is the problem, so you’ll need to uninstall it first. Go to your Mac hard drive and then to “/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/” and delete “Silverlight.plugin”

2. Go to your home folder and then “~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/” and delete the “Silverlight” folder. (thank you @dejunky for this tip)

3. If you have previously installed a beta version of SD2, go to your home folder and then to “~/Documents” and delete the “Seesmic” folder. (thank you @loic for this tip)

4. Now to reinstall Silverlight. Download the latest version from microsoft.com/getsilverlight and install it.

5. Close your browser and then reopen it.

6. Download SD2 Seesmic’s website.

It should now work. If you’re still having trouble, continue reading:

You may have some extra Silverlight files that were not deleted. Go to your Mac hard drive and do the following:

  • Go to “/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/” and delete “Silverlight.plugin”
  • Also in “/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/” delete “WPFe.plugin”
  • Go to “/Library/Receipts/” and delete “Silverlight.pkg”
  • Also in “/Library/Receipts/” delete “Silverlight_W2_MIX.pkg”
  • Also in “/Library/Receipts/” delete “WPFe.pkg”
  • Go to your home folder and then to “~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/” and delete the “Silverlight” folder. (thank you @dejunky for this tip)

Don’t worry if some of these files don’t exist.

Alternatively paste the following code into Terminal and let it run:

rm -rf /Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/Silverlight.plugin/ && rm -rf /Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/WPFe.plugin && rm -rf /Library/Receipts/Silverlight.pkg/ && rm -rf /Library/Receipts/Silverlight_W2_MIX.pkg/ && rm -rf /Library/Receipts/WPFe.pkg/ && rm -rf ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Silverlight

Repeat steps 2-4 above and it should work.

Edit: As evidenced by the comments, this isn’t as surefire a solution as I had hoped. They are, however the steps that I took and it worked for me, so it’s worth a try.

I’ve added a tip courtesy of @dejunky in the comments: Go to your home folder and then “~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/” and delete the “Silverlight” folder before reinstalling Silverlight.

If you have any other solutions, please share them in the comments.

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