How to uninstall Multipass on Mac

Multipass creates and runs Ubuntu virtual machines through a system-level daemon, and the app is only its front end, so delete and purge your instances before you remove anything. These steps cover the official pkg installer from Canonical's GitHub releases and the Homebrew cask multipass. The recorded Mole test copied only the app out of the pkg without running the installer, so it never had the daemon described here.

Delete your instances first

multipass list
multipass delete --all
multipass purge

multipass delete only marks an instance for removal, and multipass recover can still bring it back until you run multipass purge, which destroys every deleted instance for good (delete command, purge command). Run these as yourself, not with sudo, and confirm multipass list shows nothing before continuing.

Quit and remove the app

Quit Multipass's menu bar item if it is running, check Activity Monitor for multipass, then move Multipass from Applications to the Trash.

If you ran the full pkg installer, it also installed a system daemon, multipassd, a command-line tool at /usr/local/bin/multipass and installer receipts, and dragging the app to the Trash touches none of them. Canonical's uninstall script handles that part:

sudo sh "/Library/Application Support/com.canonical.multipass/uninstall.sh"

The script also tries to delete your instances, and a GitHub report shows that step failing with an authentication error when it runs as root; if you already purged your instances above, that error has nothing left to delete (issue #4484). Another report found older versions of the script leaving /Library/Application Support/multipass-client-certificate and /Library/LaunchAgents/com.canonical.multipass.gui.autostart.plist behind, so check for those two afterward (issue #2692).

Where Multipass keeps its data

Location	What it holds	What to do
`~/Library/Application Support/com.canonical.multipassGui`	App data under the bundle id	Selected by default
`~/Library/Application Support/multipass`, `~/Library/Application Support/multipass-gui`	App data under the display name	Listed but not selected by default
`~/Library/Preferences/multipass`	Preferences folder	Listed but not selected by default
`~/Library/Saved Application State/com.canonical.multipassGui.savedState`	Window state	Selected by default
`~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.canonical.multipass.gui.autostart.plist`	Starts the menu bar app at login, named in the Homebrew zap list	Remove it if Multipass is gone; check System Settings › General › Login Items & Extensions too
`/Library/Application Support/com.canonical.multipass`	The daemon's system files and the uninstall script, from the full installer	Leave it for Canonical's script
`/usr/local/bin/multipass`	The command-line tool, from the full installer	Removed by Canonical's script or by Homebrew

Check the result

pgrep -il multipass
multipass list
ls -d ~/Library/Application\ Support/com.canonical.multipassGui
launchctl list | grep -i multipass

No output from pgrep means nothing named Multipass is running.
multipass list failing with "command not found" means the command-line tool is gone; a list of instances means some survived.
ls -d prints the folder if it is still there; "No such file or directory" means it is gone.
A line from launchctl list means a Multipass login item or agent is still loaded in your session.

If you installed it with Homebrew

Mole skips --zap when its list reaches unchecked or shared data, or cannot fully be checked, and still cleans the leftovers you selected.

The multipass cask installs through the same pkg, so brew uninstall --cask multipass always runs its uninstall step first, unloading multipassd, forgetting its receipts and deleting /Library/Application Support/com.canonical.multipass, /Library/Logs/Multipass, /usr/local/bin/multipass and the shell completion file, whether or not you add --zap. Its zap list separately reaches ~/Library/Application Support/com.canonical.multipassGui, multipass, multipass-gui, the login item plist, ~/Library/Preferences/multipass and the saved window state, all inside your own ~/Library. Because multipass, multipass-gui and the preferences folder are listed but not selected by default, Mole leaves --zap out with the default selection; tick every row the zap list reaches and Mole can include it.

brew uninstall --cask multipass

What Mole lists

~/Library/Application Support/com.canonical.multipassGui and the saved window state are selected by default.
~/Library/Application Support/multipass, ~/Library/Application Support/multipass-gui and ~/Library/Preferences/multipass are listed but not selected by default.
A login item plist whose program is inside Multipass.app is listed and selected by default.
After a full install Mole can also list system-level Multipass folders for review, unselected; leave those to Canonical's uninstall script or Homebrew, which also stop the daemon.

What this test covered

Multipass was installed on September 19, 2026 by copying the app out of the official pkg's payload without running the installer, so no daemon or command-line tool was present, and it was uninstalled the same day with Mole Preview build 277. The bundle-id Application Support folder was removed as a selected-by-default row. A full installer run, a running VM instance, Canonical's uninstall script and the Homebrew cask were not part of this test; the daemon and script facts come from the Homebrew cask and two public GitHub reports, read on September 27, 2026.