How to remove the Epson ScanSmart icon from the macOS menu bar

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I recently purchased the Epson WorkForce ES-500W wireless scanner. I’ve been impressed by the speed and quality, and how easy it has made it to move towards a digital filing system.

One aspect that I wasn’t a fan of was the ScanSmart menu item that was added to the macOS menu bar after I installed the software. This menu item frequently displays notifications that can’t be dismissed, and the agents running in the background use quite a bit of CPU time.

Epson ScanSmart menu item and notification
The Epson ScanSmart menu item and notification

How to disable

You can disable the Epson agents using the launchctl command. The steps below have been verified to work on macOS Catalina (10.15).

  1. Launch the Terminal application (in Applications\Utilities).
  2. Type id, then press the enter key. Note the user id number (e.g. uid=501) displayed for your user account. If your user account has a different user id number, change the “501” part of the commands below to match your uid.
  3. Type launchctl disable gui/501/com.epson.scannermonitor, then press the enter key.
  4. Type launchctl disable gui/501/com.epson.eventmanager.agent, then press the enter key.
Disable the Epson agents using the launchctl command
Disabling the Epson ScanSmart agents using the launchctl command. You may need to restart, or log out, for the changes to take effect.

How to re-enable

You can easily re-enable the Epson agents by doing the following:

  1. Launch the Terminal application (in Applications\Utilities).
  2. Type id, then press the enter key. Note the user id number (e.g. uid=501) displayed for your user account. If your user account has a different user id number, change the “501” part of the commands below to match your uid.
  3. Type launchctl enable gui/501/com.epson.scannermonitor, then press the enter key.
  4. Type launchctl enable gui/501/com.epson.eventmanager.agent, then press the enter key.