How to uninstall Kiro on Mac

Kiro's CLI reference describes ~/.kiro, the folder behind its KIRO_HOME setting, as the home of your global agents, prompts, skills, steering, settings and sessions. Removing the Kiro app does not remove that folder, so decide on its own whether you want to keep it. This guide covers the official Mac download from kiro.dev and the Homebrew cask kiro.

Sign out and quit

If you are signed in, look for a sign-out option in Kiro's account menu first. Kiro's CLI reference documents a separate kiro-cli logout that clears authentication tokens and session credentials while keeping agent configurations, saved conversations, settings and MCP server configurations. The IDE in this test was never signed in, so its own sign-out was not checked. Quit Kiro from its application menu and check Activity Monitor for a lingering process.

Move Kiro to Trash

Open the Applications folder in Finder and move Kiro to Trash.

Review app data

Press Shift + Command + G in Finder and check the paths below. Skip any that are missing.

If you installed it with Homebrew

The kiro cask's zap list trashes Kiro's recent-documents list under ~/Library/Application Support/com.apple.sharedfilelist, ~/Library/Application Support/Kiro, ~/Library/Preferences/dev.kiro.desktop.plist and ~/Library/Saved Application State/dev.kiro.desktop.savedState, and it has an rmdir step for ~/.kiro, which removes that folder only when it is empty. Running brew uninstall --cask --zap kiro yourself trashes the four items whatever you ticked in Mole, while ~/.kiro stays as long as anything is saved in it. To keep the Application Support folder, leave --zap out:

brew uninstall --cask kiro

When Mole removes a Homebrew-installed Kiro, it does not count the rmdir step, since that step never deletes files, and the four trashed paths all sit inside ~/Library. What decides is ~/Library/Application Support/Kiro: Mole lists it unticked, and while it stays unticked Mole leaves --zap out and removes only the rows you selected. If you tick it too, nothing in the zap list is left unreviewed, so Mole runs --zap.

Check the result

pgrep -il kiro
ls -d /Applications/Kiro.app
ls -d "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Kiro"
ls -d "$HOME/.kiro"

• No output from pgrep means no Kiro process is running. A listed process means Kiro or a helper is still open; quit it before deleting more.
• ls -d /Applications/Kiro.app printing the path means the app is still there.
• ls -d "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Kiro" printing the path means the app data survived, which is what you get when you leave that row unticked.
• ls -d "$HOME/.kiro" printing the path means your agents, prompts and skills are still there, which is expected because uninstalling Kiro does not touch that folder. "No such file or directory" means it is gone, whether you removed it yourself or never had one.

What Mole lists

For Kiro installed from kiro.dev's own download:

• ~/Library/Preferences/dev.kiro.desktop.plist and ~/Library/Saved Application State/dev.kiro.desktop.savedState are listed and selected by default when they exist.
• ~/Library/Application Support/Kiro is listed but not selected by default.
• ~/.kiro is not listed.

What this test covered

Kiro 1.1.14 was downloaded from kiro.dev, copied into Applications, and quit and removed on September 22, 2026 with a development build of Mole, in a run with eight other apps. The rows belonging to Kiro were ticked, and the app (869.4 MB) and 17.5 MB of support data went to the Trash. Kiro was not signed in. ~/.kiro held only skills created before the test (2.4 MB); Mole's list did not include it and it stayed. A ~/.kiro-shared folder created on the test day was found later; its owner was not confirmed and nothing removed it. Signing out, the Kiro CLI and the Homebrew cask were not tested.