How to uninstall balenaEtcher on Mac

balenaEtcher writes OS images to SD cards and USB drives. Keep the source images and any files you want on those drives, and finish flashing before uninstalling. This guide covers removal of the .app distributed in the official .dmg, with separate instructions for the Homebrew cask balenaetcher.

Quit balenaEtcher and remove the app

  1. Finish any flash in progress before quitting or disconnecting the target drive.
  2. Quit balenaEtcher from its menu, then check Activity Monitor for any Etcher process still running.
  3. Open Finder's Applications folder and move balenaEtcher to the Trash. If macOS says it is in use, return to the previous step first.

Review its support and preference files

In Finder, press Shift + Command + G and inspect each location below. Skip any that do not exist, and review what a folder holds before moving it to the Trash rather than deleting the parent Library folder.

Location What to do
~/Library/Application Support/balenaEtcher App settings and working data. Keep it if you want to retain settings for a reinstall.
~/Library/Preferences/io.balena.etcher.plist App preferences. Remove only for a full uninstall or a clean reset.
~/Library/Preferences/io.balena.etcher.helper.plist Helper preferences. Same decision as the file above.
~/Library/Saved Application State/io.balena.etcher.savedState Saved window state; review after quitting the app.

These locations are listed in the Homebrew cask, but not every Mac has every entry. The helper.plist here stores preferences, not a launch job. Etcher also stores settings in config.json under its application data directory, as shown in its settings implementation.

If you installed it with Homebrew

Mole checks the cask’s zap list against your selections and skips --zap if it reaches unchecked or shared data, or if the list cannot be fully verified. It still removes selected leftovers through its own cleanup. For balenaEtcher, zap includes the support folder, two preference files, recent-document records and saved window state. To keep these files, use:

brew uninstall --cask balenaetcher

Add --zap yourself only if you want those preference and support files gone in the same step. A --zap command you run yourself does not consult Mole’s selections.

Check the result

After removing the app, run these read-only checks:

pgrep -il etcher
ls -ld ~/Library/Application\ Support/balenaEtcher
ls -l ~/Library/Preferences/io.balena.etcher.plist
  • No output from pgrep means it found no process with etcher in its name. Inspect any result in Activity Monitor and quit the app before deleting its files. A command error does not confirm that the app has exited.
  • A printed path means the folder or file is still there, which is expected until you remove it. "No such file or directory" means it is already gone; a permission error is a different result to investigate.

What Mole lists

When uninstalling balenaEtcher, Mole lists the following items when it finds them:

  • ~/Library/Application Support/balenaEtcher is a display-name folder, so it is listed but not selected; review it and tick it if you want it gone.
  • ~/Library/Preferences/io.balena.etcher.plist, the io.balena.etcher.helper.plist preferences, saved application state, and the recent-documents shared-file-list entry are selected by default.
  • Launch items are listed when Mole finds matching files on your Mac. A helper preference file is not itself a launch agent or privileged helper.

What this test covered

balenaEtcher was installed through Homebrew and uninstalled with Mole Preview 272 on September 17, 2026. The record covers Application Support and preference files and notes that no helper preference plist was written. It does not verify removal after a real flashing session.