How to uninstall Alacritty on Mac

Alacritty is a terminal emulator you download as a dmg from its GitHub releases; Homebrew disabled the alacritty cask on September 1, 2026 because it fails Gatekeeper's check, though an install made through Homebrew before that date still uninstalls normally. Save any terminal sessions or unfinished work in other apps first, since quitting a terminal emulator ends whatever is running inside it.

Quit and remove the app

  1. Press Command + Q inside Alacritty, or close each of its windows, then check Activity Monitor for alacritty and confirm no process is left.
  2. Move Alacritty.app from Finder's Applications folder to the Trash.

Where Alacritty keeps data

Alacritty's own configuration documentation lists the config file it looks for, in this order: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/alacritty/alacritty.toml, $HOME/.config/alacritty/alacritty.toml, and the older $HOME/.alacritty.toml. Alacritty configuration docs

Location What it holds What to do
~/.config/alacritty Your Alacritty configuration, if you created one Review before removing; back it up if you want to reuse your settings
~/.alacritty.toml The older single-file configuration location Same as above
~/Library/Preferences/org.alacritty.plist Preferences Remove for a clean reinstall
~/Library/Saved Application State/org.alacritty.savedState Saved window state Remove with the app

On the test Mac neither config path had ever been created, so Alacritty was still running on its defaults. If you've customized colors, fonts or keybindings, check the two paths above before removing the app.

Check the result

pgrep -il alacritty
ls -d ~/.config/alacritty ~/.alacritty.toml
command -v alacritty
  • No output from pgrep means no Alacritty process is running.
  • ls -d prints each path that exists and reports "No such file or directory" for the rest; keep whichever one holds your settings.
  • command -v alacritty printing nothing means no alacritty command is left on your PATH. A printed path after you moved the app to the Trash means a command linked by an earlier Homebrew install is still there; run the Homebrew command below to remove it.

If you installed it with Homebrew

Homebrew disabled the alacritty cask on September 1, 2026 because it fails Gatekeeper's check, so it can no longer be installed with brew install --cask alacritty; an existing Homebrew install still removes normally. Homebrew Alacritty cask

A plain Homebrew uninstall removes the app together with what the cask linked into place: the alacritty command, its manual pages, shell completions and two terminfo entries under ~/.terminfo/61. The zap list adds only your preferences file and saved window state, both selected by default in Mole, and doesn't name your configuration file. When Mole removes a Homebrew install it leaves --zap out if you untick either of those two rows. To remove the app and its linked files while keeping everything else:

brew uninstall --cask alacritty

What Mole lists

For Alacritty installed from its GitHub release, or from a Homebrew cask installed before September 1, 2026:

  • Your preferences file and saved window state are selected by default.
  • Mole lists ~/.config/alacritty and ~/.alacritty.toml, the two configuration paths Alacritty documents, but does not select them; on the test Mac neither had been created.
  • The command, manual pages, completions and terminfo entries a Homebrew install links into place are removed by Homebrew's own uninstall, not listed as Mole rows.

What this test covered

Alacritty 0.17.0 was installed from its official GitHub release dmg, not the Homebrew cask, and uninstalled on September 17, 2026, with Mole Preview 272, alongside other apps in the same batch. No configuration file had been created on the test Mac, so neither ~/.config/alacritty nor ~/.alacritty.toml existed to be listed; the removal took the app and its folder in the system's per-user cache. A Homebrew install was not tested.