How to uninstall MonitorControl on Mac
MonitorControl controls the brightness and volume of external displays from the menu bar. It keeps no documents; in the test its data was a preferences file and a small web-storage folder, both named after its bundle id app.monitorcontrol.MonitorControl. Back up the preferences file only if you plan to reinstall and want your settings back. These steps cover the DMG from MonitorControl's GitHub releases and the Homebrew cask monitorcontrol, which install the same app; the recorded test used the Homebrew cask.
Quit MonitorControl and remove the app
MonitorControl has no Dock icon. Click its menu bar icon and choose Quit, or quit it from Activity Monitor if the menu does not respond. Then move MonitorControl from Applications to the Trash. Its login helper lives inside the app, so check System Settings › General › Login Items & Extensions afterward.
Where MonitorControl keeps its data
In Finder, press Shift + Command + G and open each location that exists.
| Location | What it holds | What to do |
|---|---|---|
~/Library/Preferences/app.monitorcontrol.MonitorControl.plist |
App preferences | Back it up if you want your settings after a reinstall, otherwise safe to remove |
~/Library/HTTPStorages/app.monitorcontrol.MonitorControl |
Per-app web storage macOS keeps for network requests | Safe to remove |
Homebrew's zap list for this cask names three paths under an older identifier, me.guillaumeb.*: ~/Library/Application Scripts/me.guillaumeb.MonitorControlHelper, ~/Library/Containers/me.guillaumeb.MonitorControlHelper and ~/Library/Preferences/me.guillaumeb.MonitorControl.plist. The test Mac had none of them. If they exist on yours, they are left from an older MonitorControl release and hold only that release's helper data and settings.
Check the result
Run these read-only commands in Terminal:
pgrep -il monitorcontrol
launchctl list | grep -i monitorcontrol
ls -d ~/Library/Preferences/app.monitorcontrol.MonitorControl.plist ~/Library/HTTPStorages/app.monitorcontrol.MonitorControl
No output from pgrep means MonitorControl is not running. No output from launchctl list means no MonitorControl job is loaded in your session; a line naming it means a login job is still registered, so check Login Items & Extensions. For ls, "No such file or directory" means that path is gone; a printed path means it is still on disk.
An entry for MonitorControl's helper can stay listed in Login Items & Extensions after the app is gone, with no file behind it. It is macOS's background-item record, not a running process, and it starts nothing once the app is deleted.
If you installed it with Homebrew
The monitorcontrol cask's zap list only names the older me.guillaumeb.* paths above, not today's app.monitorcontrol.MonitorControl preferences or web-storage folder. Running brew uninstall --cask --zap monitorcontrol yourself clears those old files if they exist and leaves the current two in place; without --zap it removes only the app:
brew uninstall --cask monitorcontrol
When Mole removes a Homebrew-installed MonitorControl, the zap entries all sit inside ~/Library and none of them is a row in Mole's list, so Mole runs --zap: any old me.guillaumeb.* files go too, and the current preferences and web-storage folder leave through the rows Mole selects.
What Mole lists
~/Library/Preferences/app.monitorcontrol.MonitorControl.plist and ~/Library/HTTPStorages/app.monitorcontrol.MonitorControl are listed and selected by default, since both are named after MonitorControl's own bundle id. The older me.guillaumeb.* paths are not listed, because that identifier is not the installed app's. MonitorControl's login helper shows in Mole's startup list as part of the app, for confirmation only.
What this test covered
MonitorControl was installed from the Homebrew cask monitorcontrol and uninstalled on September 17, 2026 with Mole 1.15 Preview (build 272), in a batch of eight casks. The app, its preferences file and its HTTPStorages folder went to the Trash, and the cask receipt was cleared. The older me.guillaumeb.* paths were not on the test Mac. Before the uninstall, Mole showed the login helper as embedded and confirmation-only, switched off; after it, and after refreshing the startup list, macOS still kept a background-item record for the helper with nothing on disk behind it, and Mole left it alone. Several displays, custom key settings and the GitHub DMG were not tested.