Uninstall OBS on Mac

Back up your scene collections, profiles and any recordings you want to keep before removing OBS Studio. These steps cover OBS installed from the official disk image and from the Homebrew cask obs; the recorded test used the Homebrew cask, and the Homebrew section below explains what its zap step deletes.

Export scene collections and profiles first

OBS keeps your scenes, sources and stream/recording settings as scene collections and profiles, and its Scene Collection and Profile menus each have an Export item (Scene Collection › Export, Profile › Export) that saves a copy you can re-import later. Export only writes the JSON configuration, not the media files a scene references, so keep those files in place until you have confirmed the export opens correctly in a fresh install.

Check where your recordings are

OBS records to ~/Movies by default, but the location is configurable per setup. Open OBS, go to Settings › Output, and check the Recording Path on the Recording tab before you remove anything; a custom path will not be under ~/Movies.

Quit OBS and remove the app

1. Stop any active recording or stream and let OBS finish writing the file.
2. Quit OBS from its app menu.
3. Move OBS from Applications to the Trash (official download), or let Homebrew remove it (see below).

Where OBS keeps its data

Recordings and screenshots stay wherever you set them (commonly ~/Movies), and are not part of OBS's own Application Support data; check that folder separately.

Remove the virtual camera

Newer OBS builds on macOS install the virtual camera as a Camera Extension rather than a plain plugin. Open System Settings › General › Login Items & Extensions › Camera Extensions and remove OBS Virtual Camera there if it is still listed after OBS itself is gone; do not try to delete the system extension file by hand. Older installs used a plugin at /Library/CoreMediaIO/Plug-Ins/DAL/obs-mac-virtualcam.plugin, which the Homebrew cask's own uninstall step deletes (see below), with or without --zap. OBS virtual camera troubleshooting

Streaming and recording accounts

Removing OBS does not sign you out of Twitch, YouTube or any other platform, and does not cancel anything there: your stream key and channel live on that platform's servers, not in OBS's local files.

Check the result

Run these read-only commands in Terminal:

pgrep -ilf obs
launchctl list | grep -i obsproject
systemextensionsctl list | grep -i obs
ls -d ~/Library/Application\ Support/obs-studio
ls -d "/Library/CoreMediaIO/Plug-Ins/DAL/obs-mac-virtualcam.plugin"

No output from pgrep means OBS is not running. No output from launchctl list means no OBS background job is loaded. The systemextensionsctl list line shows whether the virtual camera extension is still registered; an activated enabled or activated waiting for user entry means it is, and removing it goes through System Settings, not this command. ls -d on the Application Support folder either lists it (your scene collections and profiles are still there, expected if you kept them) or reports "No such file or directory". The last ls -d reports the same for the legacy DAL plugin; on a current install this path is normally already gone.

If you installed it with Homebrew

The next Mole update will skip --zap when its list reaches unchecked or shared data, or cannot be fully checked. Mole will still clean the leftovers you selected. Preview 290 does not include this protection.

In Preview 290, Mole removes a Homebrew cask the same way as brew uninstall --cask --zap obs. The cask's own uninstall step (which runs whether or not you use --zap) quits OBS and deletes the legacy obs-mac-virtualcam.plugin. Its zap list goes further and moves your entire ~/Library/Application Support/obs-studio folder to the Trash, along with HTTPStorages, preferences and saved window state, so the zap step deletes your scene collections and profiles, whatever you have ticked in Mole. Export what you need first, or run the app-only removal below. Homebrew OBS cask

brew uninstall --cask obs

In the recorded test, the zap step needed administrator authorization for the system-level plugin delete, and that step sat waiting for authorization long enough that Mole's own timeout kicked in; Mole then moved the app to the Trash rather than retrying, and a follow-up brew uninstall --cask obs (without zap) cleared the receipt. Because zap never ran, ~/Library/Application Support/obs-studio and the preferences file both stayed on disk that time, not because the preferences file is unselected by default (it normally is selected, as below), but because the whole removal fell back to a plain app move instead of running zap or Mole's own selection.

What Mole lists

This describes Mole 1.15 (currently in Preview) for OBS installed from the official download:

• ~/Library/Application Support/obs-studio is listed but not selected, so your scene collections and profiles are kept unless you tick the row.
• ~/Library/HTTPStorages/com.obsproject.obs-studio (and its cookies file), the preferences plist and the saved window state are selected by default.
• The virtual camera Camera Extension and the legacy DAL plugin are outside Mole's uninstall list; the DAL plugin is removed by the Homebrew cask's uninstall step, but only for a Homebrew install.

What this test covered

OBS was installed and removed through the Homebrew cask obs on September 17, 2026, with a development build of Mole. The ~/Library/Application Support/obs-studio folder was already the Application Support review row Mole expects. Mole's --zap removal hit its authorization timeout and was demoted to a plain app removal instead of retrying; the app was then removed with brew uninstall --cask obs (no zap), and the Application Support folder and preferences file stayed on disk. The OBS Virtual Camera system extension stayed registered after this uninstall and needed a separate pass through System Settings on this Mac (confirmed later the same week, with systemextensionsctl list returning no entries afterward). The official disk-image download, scene collection export/import, and recording-file handling were not part of this uninstall test.