After 14 years of Undercover recovery successes, we need to inform you that we'll no longer be developing or supporting Undercover.
All Undercover support will stop on Jan. 1st 2020.
If you want to continue protecting your Mac, we recommend switching to HiddenApp.
Established in 2010, HiddenApp has been recovering thousands of Macs, iPads and iPhones. Hidden not only offers a solution for protecting macOS devices but also has an offering for iOS, which means you can protect your entire suite of Apple devices with one solution. HiddenApp is fully road-tested and ready for the imminent release of macOS Catalina and also has a brand new iOS app that will be released in the coming weeks.
We have negotiated a 20% discount on all Hidden orders with the following coupon code: UNDERCOVER20
Switch To HiddenApp
Why are we halting Undercover development
The main reason is that over the past 6 years, Apple has significantly increased security on macOS. While that’s a good thing in general, it makes it increasingly more difficult to reliably run hidden software like Undercover.
Another key point is that FileVault has become mainstream. This means that a thief won’t be able to access your files without your password - again a good thing. However, this also means that Undercover won’t be able to function properly, as third party developers don’t have access to the recovery partition that is being used when a thief boots your Mac without knowing your password. Only Apple has access to this recovery partition, where it can run FindMyMac.
Undercover (or any other third party application) can’t run on this recovery partition and will be useless if FileVault has been enabled.
A third reason is that with macOS Catalina, Apple is refreshing its FindMyMac app (now called FindMy) and will leverage its large installed base of Macs and iPhones to track stolen devices, even if they never connect to the internet. They do so by using Bluetooth connections of nearby devices that are connected to the internet. Again a great idea from Apple, but Undercover or any other third party application, do not have access to this functionality.
When launched in January 2006, Undercover was groundbreaking software. The fact that Apple has replicated Undercover-like functionality and embedded it deep into iOS and macOS shows the value of the theft-recovery genre that Undercover has pioneered. At this point, however, we feel that we can no longer deliver reliable software due to security restrictions, while having a hard time carving out a successful business model competing with free Apple software that is installed by default on every Mac and has access to system features that we can only dream of.
We're proud of the literally thousands of stolen Macs that have been recovered thanks to Undercover. We're also proud of the fact that Undercover helped bringing a little bit of justice in a world that's often unfair. Undercover even provided critical evidence to arrest a drug gang.
We would like to thank you, as a user, for your continued support over the past 14 years. It has been a great journey!
- The Undercover Team
Uninstalling Undercover
You can only uninstall Undercover if you are an administrator of your Mac.
Please follow these instructions:
- Go to the following folder in the Finder: /Library/LaunchDaemons
- Remove com.orbicule.uc.plist
- Go to the following folder in the Finder: /Library/LaunchAgents
- Remove com.orbicule.UCAgent.plist
- Choose Go To Folder from the Finder's Go menu
- Enter the following path: /usr/local/
- Remove the uc folder in this folder
- Reboot your Mac
This will remove Undercover from your Mac.
