How to uninstall Canva on Mac

Canva keeps your designs in your Canva account, not on the Mac, so removing the desktop app loses no designs. Canva's own help says the same about wiping the app's local folders. Anything you downloaded from Canva, such as exported PNGs or PDFs, sits wherever you saved it and stays there. Removing the app does not cancel a Canva Pro or Teams subscription. This guide covers the Canva desktop app downloaded from canva.com and the Homebrew cask canva.

Quit and remove the app

  1. Quit Canva with Command + Q. If it will not close, use Force Quit from the Apple menu; Canva notes you may lose unsaved changes that way.
  2. Search Activity Monitor for Canva and check that its helper processes have exited.
  3. Move Canva from Applications to the Trash.
  4. Open System Settings › General › Login Items & Extensions. In the recorded test Canva's login item was still listed after the app was in the Trash. Turn it off.

Canva can update itself while it is installed. In the recorded test it moved from 1.125.1 to 1.126.0; that does not change these steps.

Where Canva keeps its data

Canva's troubleshooting advice for a reset is to quit the app and delete the Canva folders in ~/Library other than the app itself, noting that no designs are lost. Canva: get started with the desktop app Rather than searching ~/Library for every match, open these specific locations, which come from Homebrew's zap list, with Shift + Command + G in Finder. Skip any that is missing.

Location What it holds What to do
~/Library/Application Support/Canva The app's local data Remove it once you are done with Canva on this Mac
~/Library/Caches/com.canva.CanvaDesktop and ~/Library/Caches/com.canva.CanvaDesktop.ShipIt Cache and downloaded updates Safe to remove
~/Library/Logs/Canva Logs Safe to remove
~/Library/Preferences/com.canva.CanvaDesktop.plist and ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.canva.CanvaDesktop.savedState Preferences and window state Remove with the app
~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.canva.availability-check-agent.plist A launch agent listed in the zap list Remove it if it exists and the app is gone

Check the result

Run these read-only commands after the app is in the Trash:

pgrep -il canva
ls -d "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Canva" ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.canva.availability-check-agent.plist
  • No output from pgrep means Canva is not running. A listed process means the app or one of its helpers is still open.
  • ls -d prints each item that still exists. A surviving Application Support/Canva is expected after a Mole uninstall with the default selection. "No such file or directory" means that item is gone.

If you installed it with Homebrew

Mole skips --zap when the zap list reaches data you left unchecked, a path another installed app uses, or anything Mole cannot check, and it still cleans the leftovers you selected.

The canva cask's zap list covers every location in the table above, including ~/Library/Application Support/Canva. brew uninstall --cask --zap canva moves them to the Trash; your designs stay in your Canva account and your exported files stay where you saved them. To remove only the app:

brew uninstall --cask canva

Homebrew's canva cask

What Mole lists

For Canva downloaded from canva.com:

  • ~/Library/Application Support/Canva is listed but not selected.
  • The caches under com.canva.CanvaDesktop including the ShipIt update cache, ~/Library/Logs/Canva, the preferences and the saved state are selected by default.
  • Login items are not edited; turn off Canva's in System Settings.

What this test covered

On September 19, 2026, Canva 1.125.1 was copied from the official download into Applications, without Homebrew; it updated itself to 1.126.0 while installed, and Mole's update check recorded it as an Electron app. While running it showed as one row in Status at about 406 MB. It was then uninstalled with Mole 1.15 Preview build 277 using the default selection: the app and its selected leftovers went to the Trash, Application Support/Canva was listed, left unselected and stayed on disk, and Canva's login item was still listed afterwards, pointing at the app in the Trash. The record includes no signed-in account, and the Homebrew cask was not tested.

On September 26, 2026, Canva was installed again from the official download, opened once, and uninstalled with a development build of Mole with every listed row ticked. Status showed one Canva row of nine processes at about 314 MB. Fourteen items went to the Trash and nothing from the list was left.