Uninstall Calibre on Mac

Find out where your calibre library actually lives before removing the app. Your books and their catalog live outside calibre's own application data, and nothing here removes them, but it is worth confirming their location first. These steps cover calibre installed from the official disk image and from the Homebrew cask calibre; the recorded test used the Homebrew cask.

Your library is not application data

By default calibre creates ~/Calibre Library on first launch and stores every book plus the metadata.db catalog database there; you can also point calibre at a different folder, and Preferences shows the current path if you are not sure. This folder sits directly in your home directory, outside ~/Library, so removing calibre never touches it, but back it up yourself before any cleanup, since it is the one thing here that cannot be re-downloaded. If you use more than one library, check each one's location the same way.

Quit and remove the app

Quit calibre from its app menu (this also stops the content server and E-book viewer if you had them open from calibre), then move calibre from Applications to the Trash (official download), or let Homebrew remove it (see below).

Where calibre keeps its data

calibre's own manual confirms ~/Library/Preferences/calibre as its configuration folder, including plugins. calibre customization reference

Check the result

Run these read-only commands in Terminal:

pgrep -ilf calibre
launchctl list | grep -i kovidgoyal
ls -d ~/Library/Preferences/calibre
ls -d ~/Library/Application\ Support/calibre-ebook.com
ls -d ~/Calibre\ Library

No output from pgrep means calibre is not running. No output from launchctl list means calibre never registered a background job. The two ls -d lines for Preferences and Application Support either list the folder or report "No such file or directory". The last command checks your library folder; it should still list your books unless you deliberately moved or removed it yourself, regardless of what you did with the app.

If you installed it with Homebrew

The next Mole update will skip --zap when its list reaches unchecked or shared data, or cannot be fully checked. Mole will still clean the leftovers you selected. Preview 290 does not include this protection.

Mole Preview 290 removes a Homebrew cask the same way as brew uninstall --cask --zap calibre. The cask's zap list moves ~/Library/Preferences/calibre, ~/Library/Application Support/calibre-ebook.com, ~/Library/Caches/calibre, and both apps' preferences and saved-window-state files to the Trash, whatever you have ticked in Mole. ~/Library/Application Support/calibre-ebook.com and the separate E-book Viewer preferences and saved-state files are not something Mole's own uninstall list recognizes on its own for an official-download install, since their names and bundle id do not match calibre's main bundle id; they only get removed here because Homebrew's own list names them directly. Your ~/Calibre Library folder is never in the zap list and stays untouched either way. Back up any plugins or recipes first, or run the app-only removal below. Homebrew calibre cask

brew uninstall --cask calibre

What Mole lists

This describes Mole 1.15 (currently in Preview) for calibre installed from the official download:

• ~/Library/Preferences/calibre and ~/Library/Caches/calibre are selected by default, along with ~/Library/Preferences/net.kovidgoyal.calibre.plist and its saved window state.
• ~/Library/Application Support/calibre-ebook.com and the separate E-book Viewer preferences and saved-state files are outside Mole's uninstall list; they are removed only when Homebrew's zap step names them directly.
• ~/Calibre Library (or wherever you pointed calibre's library) is never listed or touched.

What this test covered

calibre was installed and removed through the Homebrew cask calibre on September 19, 2026, with an official Mole 277 build; Mole reported it as already covered by its existing rules, so nothing new was added for this app. Homebrew's zap step moved the Caches and Preferences folders to the Trash; the library folder was not collected. A first pass of this test recorded no library folder on disk, which a same-day recheck corrected: ~/Calibre Library (656 KB) was present the whole time, created automatically by calibre's first-launch setup, and Mole's decision not to collect it was already the right one either way. The official disk-image install was not part of this uninstall test.