How to uninstall Amethyst on Mac

Amethyst is a tiling window manager that runs from the menu bar and needs Accessibility permission to move your windows. Its settings live in one preferences file, and if you wrote a YAML config file, that file overrides the settings window, so copy either one before removing Amethyst if you want the same layouts later. The steps below cover the official download from GitHub and the Homebrew cask amethyst.

Quit Amethyst and remove the app

Click Amethyst's menu bar icon and quit it from there, then move Amethyst from Applications to the Trash. The recorded test registered no login item; if you set Amethyst to start at login, check System Settings › General › Login Items & Extensions as well.

Where Amethyst keeps its data

In Finder, press Shift + Command + G and check each location that exists.

Location What it holds What to do
~/Library/Preferences/com.amethyst.Amethyst.plist Amethyst's settings Copy it first if you want to keep them
~/Library/Application Support/Amethyst App data; empty in the recorded test Review before removing
~/.amethyst.yml or ~/.config/amethyst/amethyst.yml An optional YAML config you created, documented by Amethyst Keep or remove it yourself

Afterward, open System Settings › Privacy & Security › Accessibility and turn off or remove the entry for Amethyst; removing the app does not withdraw that permission on its own.

Check the result

pgrep -il amethyst
launchctl list | grep -i amethyst
ls -d ~/Library/Preferences/com.amethyst.Amethyst.plist ~/Library/Application\ Support/Amethyst ~/.amethyst.yml
  • No output from pgrep means Amethyst is not running.
  • No output from launchctl list means no Amethyst job is loaded; a line naming com.amethyst means a login item is still registered.
  • ls -d printing "No such file or directory" for a path means that file or folder is gone; a printed path means it is still there.

If you installed it with Homebrew

Mole skips --zap when its list reaches unchecked or shared data, or cannot fully be checked, and still cleans the leftovers you selected.

The amethyst cask's zap list covers the preferences file and ~/Library/Application Support/Amethyst, plus the app's cache, cookies, HTTP storage and a recent-documents record, all under your own ~/Library. Mole lists those extra rows too and selects them by default when they exist. ~/Library/Application Support/Amethyst is unticked by default, so Mole removes Amethyst without --zap unless you tick it. Running brew uninstall --cask --zap amethyst yourself trashes the whole list regardless of what Mole would tick; your YAML config is not in it.

brew uninstall --cask amethyst

What Mole lists

For an officially downloaded Amethyst:

  • ~/Library/Preferences/com.amethyst.Amethyst.plist is selected by default.
  • ~/Library/Application Support/Amethyst is listed but not selected by default, because the folder is named after the app rather than its identifier.
  • The YAML config files are not listed.

What this test covered

Amethyst 0.24.3 was installed from its official GitHub release and uninstalled on September 25, 2026, with a development build of Mole. Accessibility permission was never granted in this run, so revoking it afterward was not observed, and no login item or launch agent appeared. The review row was ticked, and the app, its preferences, its Application Support folder and a temporary cache folder were trashed, with nothing from the list left on disk afterward. Amethyst