How to uninstall Openscreen on Mac

Openscreen is a free, open-source screen recorder and video editor. The original project by Siddharth Vaddem is archived, and development continues at getopenscreen/openscreen, whose builds use the bundle id com.etiennelescot.openscreen and are linked from getopenscreen.com. Older builds from the original repository use com.siddharthvaddem.openscreen. Both write to the same data folder, ~/Library/Application Support/openscreen, which has a recordings folder inside: open it and move any recording you want to keep before you remove anything. This guide covers the Apple silicon build from the current project.

Quit and remove the app

  1. Quit Openscreen from its menu or press Command + Q. In the test it ran 11 processes, which Mole's Status page groups into one Openscreen row.
  2. Open Finder, go to Applications and drag Openscreen to the Trash.
  3. Openscreen asks for Screen Recording and Accessibility access. Open System Settings › Privacy & Security, go to Screen & System Audio Recording and to Accessibility, select Openscreen in each list and click the minus button. The project's README gives the same step for upgrades from versions before 1.9.0.

The app 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/Application Support/openscreen/recordings A recordings folder inside the app's data folder. It was empty in the test Move anything you want to keep out of it first.
~/Library/Application Support/openscreen The Electron data folder: settings, local storage, permissions.json and the recordings folder Remove once the recordings are safe. Keep it if the older com.siddharthvaddem.openscreen build is still installed, since it uses the same folder. Mole lists the folder for review and selects only the cache folders inside it.
~/Library/Application Support/openscreen/blob_storage, Cache, Code Cache, DawnGraphiteCache, DawnWebGPUCache, GPUCache Chromium caches Remove. Selected by default.
~/Library/Preferences/com.etiennelescot.openscreen.plist Preferences Remove. Selected by default.
~/Library/Application Support/com.apple.sharedfilelist/com.apple.LSSharedFileList.ApplicationRecentDocuments/com.etiennelescot.openscreen.sfl4 The app's recent-documents list Remove. Selected by default.

Temporary caches for com.etiennelescot.openscreen and com.etiennelescot.openscreen.helper sit in your per-user cache folder (getconf DARWIN_USER_CACHE_DIR prints it), and Mole removes them with the app.

Check the result

pgrep -il openscreen
ls -ld "/Applications/Openscreen.app" "$HOME/Library/Application Support/openscreen" "$HOME/Library/Preferences/com.etiennelescot.openscreen.plist"
  • No output from pgrep means no Openscreen process is running. A printed line is a process that is still alive; quit it in Activity Monitor.
  • A path printed by ls still exists. A surviving openscreen folder is expected if you kept it for the older build. No such file or directory means the path is gone.

If you used the old Homebrew tap

The archived original project offered a third-party tap, siddharthvaddem/openscreen/openscreen. It is not part of Homebrew's main cask list, and this test did not cover it.

What Mole lists

Mole selects the app, the preferences file, the recent-documents list, the six cache folders inside openscreen and the temporary caches. It lists ~/Library/Application Support/openscreen for review without selecting it.

These defaults assume “Remove data and settings with apps” in General › Cleaning is off. With it on, Mole also ticks the openscreen folder, unless another installed app named Openscreen is present, in which case it stays unticked.

What this test covered

On October 20, 2026, the test installed Openscreen 2.1.2 for Apple silicon from the current project's release, launched it without recording anything, and removed it with a source-built Mole with the review row ticked. Mole moved 11 rows and the app to the Trash, and a search afterwards by product name and bundle id found nothing left. Status showed one Openscreen row with 11 processes, the helper included. Mole's update page read it as an Electron app without an update feed, and no update was run. Recording, the older com.siddharthvaddem.openscreen build, the Homebrew tap and Mole's notarized release build were not tested.