Why I can't remove iTunes and how to remove it?

Whenever I run sudo rm -rf /Applications/iTunes.app, it is deleted, but after some time it's automatically restored. How can I get rid of iTunes forever without any chance of it coming back?

Solution 1:

If you just want to prevent it from launching, running

sudo chmod 000 /Applications/iTunes.app

should do the trick. Needs to be repeated after every OS X/iTunes update, but this also applies for any solutions involving removal of standard applications.

PS: Just to put things into perspective as far as disk space is concerned:

root@Mithos:/Applications$ du -sm iTunes.app Chess.app Game\ Center.app Stickies.app Photo\ Booth.app Photos.app 
191 iTunes.app
5   Chess.app
3   Game Center.app
5   Stickies.app
5   Photo Booth.app
31  Photos.app

Even on a system with just a 128 GB SSD, squeezing out 200 MB doesn't give you much.

Solution 2:

Uninstalling iTunes is not supported by Apple. Dragging it into the trash and trying to delete the trash will give you a "iTunes can't be modified or deleted because it's required by OS X" message.

Even if you do it manually, it will come back with operating system updates; and you may break certain things like some file associations and iPhone connecting/syncing abilities.

Your best bet is probably just to let it sit there and ignore it.