How to uninstall Pulse on Mac

Pulse is a native activity monitor from pulse.egoist.dev that shows processes, cores, memory, graphics, disks, network and energy, with CPU, memory, network or temperature items in the menu bar. It keeps almost nothing on disk: the test found one 4 KB folder and a temporary cache. There is nothing to back up beyond any layout or settings you would want to recreate. This guide covers the Apple silicon disk image from the project's GitHub releases and the Homebrew cask pulse.

Quit and remove the app

  1. Quit Pulse from its menu bar item or with Command + Q while its window is in front. In the test Mole's Status page grouped 4 processes into one Pulse row: the app, two macOS Metal compiler services and nettop.
  2. Open Finder, go to Applications and drag Pulse to the Trash.

The test recorded no login item or launch agent for Pulse, 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.

Location What it holds What to do
~/Library/Application Support/Pulse The app's data, 4 KB in the test Remove. Mole lists it for review and selects it by default.
A temporary cache folder named com.egoist.pulse inside the folder getconf DARWIN_USER_CACHE_DIR prints Cache, 664 KB in the test Remove with the app. Selected by default.
~/Library/Preferences/com.egoist.pulse.plist An empty preferences file, 42 bytes, that the app writes when it quits. It did not exist before the uninstall, so Mole did not list it Remove if present. Not listed by Mole.

Check the result

pgrep -x Pulse
ls -d "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Pulse" "$HOME/Library/Preferences/com.egoist.pulse.plist"
launchctl list | grep -i egoist
  • No output from pgrep means Pulse is not running; -x matches the exact process name so other programs with "pulse" in their names are not shown. A printed line is a process still alive; quit it or restart the Mac once.
  • A path printed by ls still exists. After Pulse has quit, a small com.egoist.pulse.plist is expected and harmless; move it to the Trash if you want it gone. No such file or directory means that path is gone.
  • No output from launchctl means no Pulse job is loaded for your user. A line means a background item is still registered; check Login Items & Extensions.

If you installed it with Homebrew

brew uninstall --cask pulse

The cask quits Pulse (quit: com.egoist.pulse) and then removes the app, leaving its data. Its zap list covers ~/Library/Application Support/Pulse and ~/Library/Preferences/com.egoist.pulse.plist. Running brew uninstall --cask --zap pulse deletes both 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, a matching path on disk it did not list, and unknown stanzas or unsupported directives suppress it, and Mole then removes the selected rows itself.

What Mole lists

Mole selects the app and the temporary cache folder. It lists ~/Library/Application Support/Pulse for review and selects it by default. Before removing, Mole asks Pulse to quit. Mole does not collect the empty preferences file the app writes on quit.

What this test covered

On November 9, 2026, the test downloaded the Apple silicon disk image 0.1.29 from the project's feedback repository release, 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 2 rows and the app to the Trash with no failures. The one item left afterwards was the empty com.egoist.pulse.plist the app wrote while quitting, which neither the review nor the first-launch snapshot had listed. Status showed one Pulse row with 4 processes, and Mole found no update channel, so no update was run. Menu bar items, long-running history and a Homebrew-managed uninstall were not tested.