Remove Leftover Files After Uninstalling Mac Apps

Dragging an app to the Trash removes the app bundle, but not the preferences, caches, and support files it scattered across your Library folder. Most leftovers are harmless kilobytes; a few are multi-gigabyte caches. Here's where they hide, how to track them down, and when to leave them alone.

Where app leftovers live

Almost everything an app stores outside its own bundle lands in your user Library folder, which Finder hides by default. Five locations cover nearly all of it:

• ~/Library/Application Support — the big one: databases, downloaded content, and plug-ins, usually in a folder named after the app or its developer.
• ~/Library/Caches — rebuildable temporary data. This is where the multi-gigabyte leftovers usually hide.
• ~/Library/Preferences — settings files named by bundle ID, like com.vendor.appname.plist. Rarely more than a few kilobytes each.
• ~/Library/Containers — private data folders for sandboxed apps, one per app.
• ~/Library/LaunchAgents — small files that tell macOS to start an app's helper processes at login. Worth clearing so a dead app's helpers stop trying to run.

This layout is the same on macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia, so the steps below work on all three.

Delete leftovers by hand

1. In Finder, choose Go → Go to Folder (or press Shift-Command-G), type ~/Library/Application Support, and press Return.
2. Look for folders named after the app you removed — or after its developer, since some vendors nest several apps in one folder. Drag matches to the Trash.
3. Repeat the search in ~/Library/Caches, ~/Library/Containers, and ~/Library/LaunchAgents.
4. In ~/Library/Preferences, trash any .plist files containing the app's name or vendor, such as com.vendor.appname.plist.
5. Leave everything in the Trash for a few days before emptying it. If an app you still use starts misbehaving, right-click its file in the Trash and choose Put Back.

That Put Back step is your undo — nothing is permanent until you empty the Trash, so work through Finder rather than deleting from Terminal.

Search by bundle ID

Apps identify themselves to macOS with a reverse-DNS bundle ID like com.spotify.client. Leftovers named this way are unambiguous — no guessing whether a folder called "CEF" belongs to the app you removed. Spotlight already indexes these names, so mdfind can list them all at once:

# find files and folders whose name contains a bundle ID
mdfind -name "com.spotify.client"

# check a leftover folder's size before deciding it matters
du -sh ~/Library/Application\ Support/Firefox

mdfind queries the same index Spotlight uses, so it surfaces preference files, caches, and containers you'd otherwise hunt folder by folder. When it finds something, reveal it in Finder and trash it there — that keeps every deletion recoverable until you empty the Trash.

When leftovers are fine to ignore

A stray preference file costs a few kilobytes and does nothing. Unless a folder shows real size in du or Finder's Get Info, deleting it is housekeeping, not a space win. Focus on Application Support and Caches folders left by heavyweight apps — browsers, Electron apps, games, and creative tools — where leftovers routinely reach hundreds of megabytes. Everything else can sit there harmlessly forever.

Leftovers can even be useful. Because preferences survive uninstalling, reinstalling an app later brings back your settings, window layouts, and licenses exactly as you left them. If there's any chance you'll use the app again, keep its Preferences file and delete only the caches. Wipe everything only when you're done with the app for good — or when you're deliberately resetting a misbehaving one to a factory-fresh state.

The biggest per-app folders live in Containers

If disk space is the real goal, check ~/Library/Containers next — sandboxed apps keep everything there, and a single container can outweigh the app itself. See our guide to the Containers folder for how to read it without deleting live data.