How to uninstall KeepingYouAwake on Mac
KeepingYouAwake is a menu bar toggle that its README describes as a small wrapper around Apple's caffeinate tool. It keeps no documents, only a small sandboxed container and its preferences, so there is nothing to back up first. These steps cover the download from KeepingYouAwake's GitHub releases and the Homebrew cask keepingyouawake, which install the same app.
Quit KeepingYouAwake and remove the app
KeepingYouAwake has no Dock icon. Open its menu bar icon and choose Quit, then move KeepingYouAwake from Applications to the Trash. Its launch-at-login helper ships inside the app; if you turned that on, it shows in System Settings › General › Login Items & Extensions, and in the test it left Mole's startup list once the app was gone.
Where KeepingYouAwake keeps its data
In Finder, press Shift + Command + G and open each location that exists.
| Location | What it holds | What to do |
|---|---|---|
~/Library/Containers/info.marcel-dierkes.KeepingYouAwake |
The app's sandboxed container | Safe to remove with the app |
~/Library/Containers/info.marcel-dierkes.KeepingYouAwake.Launcher |
The login helper's sandboxed container | Safe to remove with the app |
~/Library/Application Scripts/info.marcel-dierkes.KeepingYouAwake |
The app's sandbox scripts folder | Safe to remove with the app |
~/Library/Application Scripts/info.marcel-dierkes.KeepingYouAwake.Launcher |
The login helper's sandbox scripts folder | Safe to remove with the app |
~/Library/Preferences/info.marcel-dierkes.KeepingYouAwake.plist |
App preferences | Safe to remove |
In the test, moving the container to the Trash failed with a Trash permission error. If that happens to you, quit the app and drag the container folder to the Trash yourself in Finder, or leave it: it was 36 KB.
Check the result
Run these read-only commands in Terminal:
pgrep -il keepingyouawake
ls -d ~/Library/Containers/info.marcel-dierkes.KeepingYouAwake ~/Library/Containers/info.marcel-dierkes.KeepingYouAwake.Launcher
No output from pgrep means KeepingYouAwake is not running. For ls, "No such file or directory" means that container is gone; a printed path means it is still on disk.
If you installed it with Homebrew
The keepingyouawake cask's zap list covers both containers and both Application Scripts folders above, the preferences file, and its Application Support, Caches, Cookies, Saved Application State and recent-documents entries, all named after the app's id. Running brew uninstall --cask --zap keepingyouawake yourself removes whichever of these exist, whatever you ticked in Mole; without --zap it removes only the app:
brew uninstall --cask keepingyouawake
When Mole removes a Homebrew-installed KeepingYouAwake, every zap entry sits inside ~/Library and matches a row Mole selects by default, so Mole runs --zap unless you untick one of those rows.
What Mole lists
KeepingYouAwake's container and Application Scripts folder, the login helper's matching container and scripts folder, the preferences file, and any other entries named after info.marcel-dierkes.KeepingYouAwake are listed and selected by default. The login helper itself shows in Mole's startup list as part of the app, for confirmation only.
What this test covered
KeepingYouAwake was copied from its official download, with no Homebrew receipt, and uninstalled on September 19, 2026 with Mole 1.15 Preview (build 277), in a batch of ten menu bar apps. The app went to the Trash; moving its 36 KB container and a temporary cache entry failed with a Trash permission error. Its login helper showed as embedded and confirmation-only and left the startup list after the uninstall. The Homebrew cask was not tested.