Google Gears

Google Gears is a browser plugin provided by Google and it is needed to enable drag and drop support for file upload in Google Wave. Though Google Gears is bundled with Waveboard it sometimes seems to have problems with previous installed versions of Google Gears. This is because Google Gears does not yet support Snow Leopard officially.

Uninstall previous Google Gears Installations

If you experience problems with Google Gears or Waveboard is crashing unexpectedly, you might want to uninstall Google Gears. Here is how to do that (from Google Gears Website):

  1. Close all browsers, at least Safari and Waveboard
  2. Open the “Terminal” tool from “Applications > Utilities”
  3. Enter the following command including the quotes:
    ‘/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Gears.plugin/Contents/Resources/uninstall.command’
  4. Press enter and provide your password when asked

This removes the Google Gears installation. But depending on the previous version sometime files are left on the file system and you should remove them by hand if they exist in these places:

  • /Library/Internet plug-Ins/Gears.plugin
  • /Library/InputManagers/GearsEnabler/GearsEnabler.bundle
  • ~/Library/Internet plug-Ins/Gears.plugin
  • ~/Library/InputManagers/GearsEnabler/GearsEnabler.bundle

The “~” is your users folder, usually “/Users/<YourName>”. If this still doesn’t help you can also remove the Google Gears settings by removing this folder:

  • ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Google Gears for Safari

Thanks for your patience. If you still experience problems or want to know more details or just have more suggestions, please contact us under waveboard@me.com.