How to uninstall MacPacker on Mac

MacPacker is a free, open source archive manager by Stephan Arenswald, from macpacker.app and its GitHub project. It opens archives and disk images, creates and edits ZIP and 7z archives, and adds Finder and Quick Look extensions. It keeps no library of its own: archives you opened, extracted or created stay wherever you saved them, and removing the app does not touch them. Its builds are sandboxed, so its settings sit in containers rather than in plain folders. This guide covers the zip from the project's GitHub release and the Homebrew cask macpacker; the Mac App Store build was not tested.

Quit and remove the app

  1. Finish any compression or extraction that is running, and check that the archives you made are where you expect them.
  2. Quit MacPacker with Command + Q.
  3. Open Finder, go to Applications and drag MacPacker to the Trash. Its Finder and Quick Look extensions are bundled inside the app and go with it.
  4. If MacPacker's entries still show up in Finder's right-click menu afterwards, look under System Settings › General › Login Items & Extensions. This was not tested.

MacPacker registered no login item or launch agent in the test.

Where the data lives

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

Location What it holds What to do
~/Library/Containers/com.sarensx.MacPacker, ~/Library/Containers/com.sarensx.MacPacker.FinderExtension, ~/Library/Containers/com.sarensx.MacPacker.QuickLookExtension Sandbox containers of the app and its two extensions; the preferences file sat inside the app's container Remove after quitting. Mole selects all three, see the note below this table.
~/Library/Application Scripts/com.sarensx.MacPacker, ~/Library/Application Scripts/com.sarensx.MacPacker.FinderExtension, ~/Library/Application Scripts/com.sarensx.MacPacker.QuickLookExtension Empty folders macOS creates for a sandboxed app and its extensions Remove. Selected by default.
The folder getconf DARWIN_USER_CACHE_DIR prints, then com.sarensx.MacPacker Mole's temporary cache row, 20 KB Remove. Selected by default.
~/Library/Group Containers/group.app.macpacker, ~/Library/Application Scripts/group.app.macpacker Shared App Group folders named in the cask's zap list; both existed after the first launch and their contents were not inspected Not listed by Mole. Remove them by hand in Finder if you will not reinstall MacPacker.

If macOS refuses to move a container, quit MacPacker first and try again in Finder. When Mole moves containers, it needs Full Disk Access (System Settings › Privacy & Security › Full Disk Access); without it Mole's report asks for that permission and the containers stay.

Check the result

pgrep -il macpacker
ls -d /Applications/MacPacker.app "$HOME"/Library/Containers/com.sarensx.MacPacker* "$HOME"/Library/Application\ Scripts/com.sarensx.MacPacker* "$HOME/Library/Group Containers/group.app.macpacker" "$HOME/Library/Application Scripts/group.app.macpacker"
  • No output from pgrep means MacPacker is not running. A printed line names a process still alive; quit it, or restart the Mac once.
  • For ls -d, "No such file or directory" means that path is gone. A printed path is still on disk; the two group.app.macpacker folders are expected to remain because Mole does not offer them, and a container remains if macOS refused to move it.

If you installed it with Homebrew

brew uninstall --cask macpacker

The cask quits MacPacker and removes the app on an ordinary uninstall. brew uninstall --cask --zap macpacker also trashes its zap list: the com.sarensx.MacPacker* folders in ~/Library/Application Scripts and ~/Library/Containers, and the two group.app.macpacker folders. Those hold settings, not your archives, and the command does not read Mole's checkboxes. Mole adds --zap only when its whole removal scope passes its zap gate, which requires every existing zap path to be a row Mole listed and you left ticked. When the two group folders exist, as they did after the first launch in the test, they are not rows Mole lists, so Mole leaves --zap off and removes the rows you selected itself.

What Mole lists

Mole selects the app, the temporary cache row and the Application Scripts and Containers folders of the app and its two extensions. Before removing, Mole asks MacPacker to quit. Mole does not list Application Scripts/group.app.macpacker or Group Containers/group.app.macpacker: the group is not named after MacPacker's bundle ID, so Mole treats it as shared and leaves it alone. Status shows MacPacker as one row, and the update page reads MacPacker's Sparkle feed.

What this test covered

On November 9, 2026, on a second Mac running macOS 26, the test took MacPacker 1.2.0 (Universal) from the project's GitHub release zip, whose checksum matched the Homebrew cask macpacker, copied it to Applications without running brew install, opened it once and removed it with a source-built, re-signed Debug build of Mole with every review row ticked. Mole's notarized release build was not used. In the first run Mole moved the app and 4 rows to the Trash: the three Application Scripts folders and the temporary cache. The three containers stayed because the test build ran without Full Disk Access, and Mole skipped Application Scripts/group.app.macpacker as protected data. Mole's scanner was then changed to stop listing that row. A second run on the same package listed the three containers and the temporary cache, moved the app and the cache, left the group folder alone, and again could not move the containers without Full Disk Access, so the app's preferences file stayed inside its container. Status showed one MacPacker row with 1 process. Mole detected a Sparkle update feed, and no update was run. Opening or creating archives, the Finder and Quick Look extensions in use, the App Store build, Homebrew and Mole's notarized release build were not tested.