How to uninstall BetterMouse on Mac
BetterMouse is a utility that improves third-party mouse behavior on the Mac, from better-mouse.com. It runs from the menu bar without a Dock icon, so quit it from its menu bar icon rather than looking for a window. The site says it installs no extensions, drivers or agents and that you remove it by dragging the app to the Trash. It needs Accessibility permission, and if you turned on "Run at login" it adds an entry under System Settings › General › Login Items, which you should turn off before removing the app. Each license includes 5 reusable activations; the site describes no deactivation step, so ask BetterMouse support if you want to move a license. This guide covers the zip archive from better-mouse.com and the Homebrew cask bettermouse.
Quit and remove the app
- If you want your settings, save them first. The site mentions saving your configuration to a file; do that from inside the app.
- If you enabled "Run at login", turn it off in System Settings › General › Login Items & Extensions. Then quit BetterMouse from its menu bar icon. In the test it ran as a single process and registered no login item.
- Open Finder, go to Applications and drag
BetterMouse.appto the Trash. - Open System Settings › Privacy & Security › Accessibility and remove the BetterMouse entry. The site also says Input Monitoring is not required, but remove an entry there too if one exists.
Where the data lives
Press Shift + Command + G in Finder to open each path. Skip any path that is not on your Mac.
| Location | What it holds | What to do |
|---|---|---|
The folder that getconf DARWIN_USER_CACHE_DIR prints, then com.naotanhaocan.BetterMouse |
Mole's temporary cache row, empty in the test | Remove. Selected by default. |
~/Library/Application Support/BetterMouse, ~/Library/Preferences/com.naotanhaocan.BetterMouse.plist, ~/Library/Caches/com.naotanhaocan.BetterMouse, the com.naotanhaocan.BetterMouse* entries in ~/Library/HTTPStorages and ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.naotanhaocan.BetterMouse.savedState |
Settings, caches and window state; named by the Homebrew cask, none of them existed after the test's single launch | Remove if present; the Application Support folder and the preferences file hold your settings, so back them up first. Mole lists the ones it finds; this test produced none, so their checkboxes were not seen. |
Check the result
pgrep -il bettermouse
ls -d /Applications/BetterMouse.app ~/Library/Application\ Support/BetterMouse ~/Library/Preferences/com.naotanhaocan.BetterMouse.plist
- No output from
pgrepmeans BetterMouse is not running. A printed line is a process still alive; quit it from its menu bar icon and run the command again. - For
ls -d, "No such file or directory" means that path is gone, which is also the normal result if the app never wrote settings. A printed path is still on disk.
If you installed it with Homebrew
brew uninstall --cask bettermouse
The cask only quits the app on an ordinary uninstall, so this removes the app and nothing else. brew uninstall --cask --zap bettermouse also trashes the five ~/Library locations in the table above, which deletes your saved settings. A direct brew command does not read Mole's checkboxes. Mole adds --zap only when its whole removal scope passes its zap gate (unchecked or shared paths, paths outside the reviewed boundary, unknown stanzas and unsupported directives suppress it), and otherwise removes the rows you selected itself. The Homebrew install was not tested.
What Mole lists
Mole selects the app and its temporary cache row. If a launch with real use left a preferences file or an Application Support folder, Mole would list those too; this test did not produce them. Before removing, Mole asks BetterMouse to quit, then forces it if it stays open.
What this test covered
On November 9, 2026, the test downloaded BetterMouse 1.7 as a universal zip archive from better-mouse.com, whose checksum matched the Homebrew cask, copied the app to Applications without running brew install, launched it once and quit it. A source-built Mole with the review rows ticked asked it to quit, forced it to quit when it stayed open, and moved the app and 1 row to the Trash; the name rescan found nothing left. Status showed one BetterMouse row with 1 process. Mole detected a Sparkle updater, and no update was run. No Accessibility permission was granted, no mouse was configured, no license was activated and "Run at login" was not turned on, so settings, permissions and the login entry were not tested, nor were the Homebrew install and Mole's notarized release build.