Uninstall IntelliJ IDEA on Mac
Quit IntelliJ IDEA before touching any of its folders by hand, and prefer the IDE's own cleanup tools over deleting things yourself. Your projects and .idea folders live wherever you keep them on disk and are never part of an uninstall; what this page covers is IntelliJ IDEA's own settings, caches, and logs. It covers the direct download from JetBrains and the Homebrew cask intellij-idea (which installs IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate); both install the same app bundle, so the paths below apply either way. Installing through JetBrains Toolbox is a separate distribution channel with its own app and update mechanism, not covered by the test below.
Try the IDE's own cleanup first
Before deleting anything, use File › Invalidate Caches, which clears caches and indexes and offers to restart; it is the supported way to fix a stale index without touching your settings. Confirm the exact wording in your own version, since JetBrains renames menu items between releases. For an old IDE version you no longer use, Help › Delete Leftover IDE Directories… finds that version's settings, cache, and log folders and lets you choose what to remove; a version still installed starts unselected. See JetBrains Caches on Mac (IntelliJ, WebStorm, PyCharm) for the fuller explanation of what each folder holds and a safe cleanup order.
Quit and remove the app
Quit IntelliJ IDEA from its menu, then move IntelliJ IDEA.app from Applications to the Trash. Uninstalling does not touch your projects, and it does not cancel a JetBrains license or subscription.
Where IntelliJ IDEA keeps its data
Each major version keeps its own subfolder, named IntelliJIdea<year>.<release> (for example IntelliJIdea2026.2), under a shared JetBrains parent folder. Removing the app only removes the current version's subfolder; the JetBrains parent itself is shared by every other JetBrains product on the Mac and is never touched.
| Location | What it holds | What to do |
|---|---|---|
~/Library/Application Support/JetBrains/IntelliJIdea<year>.<release> |
Settings, plugins, and Local History for that version | Listed but not selected; this is your configuration and plugin data, and Local History may hold your own recent changes |
~/Library/Caches/JetBrains/IntelliJIdea<year>.<release> |
Compiled search data, indexes | Listed but not selected; rebuilds automatically the next time you index |
~/Library/Logs/JetBrains/IntelliJIdea<year>.<release> |
Diagnostic logs | Listed but not selected; safe to remove once you're done troubleshooting |
~/Library/Preferences/com.jetbrains.intellij.plist |
App-level preferences | Selected by default; safe to remove |
~/Library/Saved Application State/com.jetbrains.intellij.savedState |
Saved window state | Selected by default; safe to remove |
The shared ~/Library/Caches/JetBrains, ~/Library/Application Support/JetBrains, and ~/Library/Caches/com.jetbrains.toolbox parent folders are never offered for deletion by Mole at all, whether you're cleaning or uninstalling, because they hold every JetBrains product's data next to each other, not just IntelliJ IDEA's.
Check the result
Run these read-only commands in Terminal:
pgrep -il "idea"
ls -d ~/Library/Application\ Support/JetBrains/IntelliJIdea*
ls -d ~/Library/Application\ Support/JetBrains
No output from pgrep means no IntelliJ IDEA process is running. The first ls -d lists any version-named IntelliJ IDEA folder still on this Mac (expected if you left that row unchecked) and prints "No such file or directory" once every version is gone. The second ls -d shows the shared JetBrains folder, which normally still exists as long as you have any other JetBrains product installed.
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-installed IntelliJ IDEA the same way as brew uninstall --cask --zap intellij-idea. The cask's zap list runs regardless of what you left checked in Mole, and it trashes your version-named settings, cache, and log folders (Application Support/JetBrains/IntelliJIdea<year>.<release>, matching folders under Caches and Logs), the app-level preferences file, a legacy Preferences/IntelliJIdea<year>.<release> folder, Preferences/jetbrains.idea.*.plist, and the saved window state: the same data the table above describes, just without the choice to keep it. Back up your settings and Local History first if you want them, or remove only the app:
brew uninstall --cask intellij-idea
What Mole lists
This describes Mole 1.15, currently in Preview. The version-named settings, cache, and log folders are listed but not selected, verified in code: Mole's uninstall scanner treats any versioned product folder under a shared vendor parent (JetBrains, Google, and similar) as review-only, and never offers the shared parent folder itself. The app-level preferences file and saved window state, which are named after the bundle identifier rather than the version, are selected by default like any other app's preferences.
What this test covered
IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate was installed from the Homebrew cask intellij-idea and uninstalled with a development build of Mole on September 19, 2026. The version-named product folder was already covered by Mole's existing rule for glued year-version product folders, and no new leftover was found. JetBrains Toolbox-managed installs, the direct-download DMG specifically, and other JetBrains IDEs sharing the same machine were not part of this test.