How to uninstall One Switch on Mac

One Switch is a menu bar app from Fireball Studio that puts system toggles in one place; its site lists Hide Desktop Icons, Dark Mode, Keep Awake, Screen Saver and AirPods. It stores very little of its own. Two things are worth doing first: turn off any switch you left on, such as Hide Desktop Icons or Keep Awake, so your Mac is in the state you want before the app that set it is gone, and keep the activation email if you bought a license, since the site says the license is sent by email and is lifetime. The test did not check whether removing the app reverts a switch. This guide covers the direct-download disk image and the Homebrew cask one-switch; the Setapp version is a separate install that was not tested.

Quit and remove the app

1. Open One Switch and turn off the switches you do not want to stay on.
2. Quit One Switch from its menu bar icon.
3. Open Finder, go to Applications and drag One Switch to the Trash.

The test recorded no login item or launch agent for One Switch, but check System Settings › General › Login Items & Extensions in case you turned one on yourself.

Where the data lives

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

Check the result

pgrep -il 'one switch'
ls -d "$HOME/Library/Application Support/One Switch" "$HOME/Library/Preferences/studio.fireball.OneSwitch.plist" "$HOME/Library/Caches/studio.fireball.OneSwitch"
launchctl list | grep -i fireball

• No output from pgrep means One Switch is not running. A printed line is a process still alive; quit it or restart the Mac once.
• A path printed by ls still exists. No such file or directory means that path is gone. The preferences file can come back if the app was still running when you removed it; move it again once the app has quit.
• No output from launchctl means no Fireball job is loaded for your user. A line means a background item is still registered; turn it off in Login Items & Extensions.

If you installed it with Homebrew

brew uninstall --cask one-switch

The cask has no uninstall step, so this removes the app and leaves its data. Its zap list covers ~/Library/Application Support/One Switch, ~/Library/Application Support/studio.fireball.OneSwitch, the cache, HTTPStorages and preferences entries above, ~/Library/WebKit/studio.fireball.OneSwitch and the recent-documents list. Running brew uninstall --cask --zap one-switch deletes those whether or not you reviewed them and does not read Mole's checkboxes. Mole adds --zap only when its whole removal scope passes its zap gate; unchecked or shared paths, paths outside the reviewed boundary and any matching path it did not list suppress it, and Mole then removes the selected rows itself.

Account and subscription

Uninstalling does not deactivate a license or cancel anything with Fireball. The site describes a seven-day free trial and a lifetime license with free updates, and the pages read for this guide say nothing about deactivating a Mac, so contact Fireball through the app's feedback option or the site if you need that.

What Mole lists

Mole selects the app, the preferences file, the cache, both HTTPStorages entries and the temporary cache folder. It lists ~/Library/Application Support/One Switch for review and selects it by default. Before removing, Mole asks One Switch to quit, clears the app's preference domain with defaults delete, which cannot be recovered from the Trash, and moves the preferences file again if the app writes it back. The recent-documents list is only found when Mole can read that folder, which needs Full Disk Access.

What this test covered

On November 9, 2026, the test downloaded the Universal disk image 1.35.4 from Fireball's site, whose sha256 matched the Homebrew cask, copied the app to Applications without running brew install, opened it once and quit it. It was removed with a source-built, re-signed Debug build of Mole with every review row ticked; Mole's notarized release build was not used. Mole moved 6 rows and the app to the Trash with no failures; the preferences file reappeared after the uninstall and Mole moved it again. The only item left was the recent-documents file, because that build ran without Full Disk Access and could not read its folder. Status showed one One Switch row with 1 process, and Mole found a Sparkle updater with no update feed, so it showed nothing to update and no update was run. No license was activated and no switch was turned on, so what each switch changes, trial and license handling and a Homebrew-managed uninstall were not tested.