How to uninstall ColaMD on Mac

ColaMD is a free, open-source Markdown editor from MarsWave, from colamd.com and its GitHub project (bundle ID ai.marswave.colamd). Your documents are ordinary .md files wherever you saved them, so removing the app never deletes them. What the app keeps is small: its own state in ~/Library/Application Support/colamd (its README lists recent files, session restore and font settings as features), and a safety copy folder, ~/.colamd/recovered. The project's v2.6.0 notes say that when you choose to load the disk version of a file over unsaved edits, the discarded text is written there first. If you ever did that, open ~/.colamd/recovered before you remove anything. This guide covers the Apple silicon disk image from the project's GitHub release and the community Homebrew cask colamd.

Quit and remove the app

1. Open ~/.colamd/recovered in Finder (Shift + Command + G) and copy out anything in it you still want. Check that the files you edited with ColaMD are saved where you expect.
2. Quit ColaMD with Command + Q. It is an Electron app; in the test the app and its helper processes showed as one ColaMD row with 7 processes in Mole's Status page. The test registered no login item or launch agent.
3. Open Finder, go to Applications and drag ColaMD to the Trash.

Where the data lives

Press Shift + Command + G in Finder to open each path. Skip any path that is not on your Mac.

Check the result

pgrep -il colamd
ls -d /Applications/ColaMD.app "$HOME/.colamd" "$HOME/Library/Application Support/colamd" "$HOME/Library/Preferences/ai.marswave.colamd.plist"
ls "$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.apple.sharedfilelist/com.apple.LSSharedFileList.ApplicationRecentDocuments" | grep -i colamd

• No output from pgrep means ColaMD is not running. A printed line is a process still alive; quit it first.
• For ls -d, No such file or directory means that path is gone. A printed path is still on disk.
• A line from the last command is the recent-documents list. It is optional to remove, and Terminal may print Operation not permitted for that folder unless it has Full Disk Access.

If you installed it with Homebrew

The README points to a community-maintained cask.

brew uninstall --cask colamd

The cask has no uninstall step, so this removes the app only. Its zap list trashes ~/.colamd (including recovered), ~/Library/Application Support/colamd, the recent-documents list and the preferences file. A direct brew uninstall --cask --zap colamd runs that whole list and 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 or unsupported directives suppress it); ~/.colamd is outside ~/Library, so Mole removes the rows you selected itself. The Homebrew install was not tested.

What Mole lists

Mole selects the app, the preferences file, the six cache subfolders in ~/Library/Application Support/colamd and the two temporary cache rows. It lists ~/Library/Application Support/colamd and ~/.colamd for review and selects them by default when eligible, so untick ~/.colamd if recovered still holds text you want. Status shows ColaMD as one row, and the update page reads its Electron updater configuration.

What this test covered

On November 9, 2026, ColaMD-2.7.11-arm64.dmg from the project's GitHub release, whose checksum matched the Homebrew cask, was copied to Applications on a test Mac without running brew install and opened once. It was removed with a source-built Mole with every review row ticked. Mole asked the app to quit and moved the app and 11 rows to the Trash with no failures. Mole's rescan found nothing left; a file listing afterwards still showed the .sfl4 recent-documents file, which Mole's scan could not read because the test build ran without Full Disk Access. Status showed one row with 7 processes. No document was edited, so recovered was not exercised, and updates, the Homebrew install and Mole's notarized release build were not tested.