How to uninstall RStudio on Mac

RStudio is only the editor. R itself, the packages you installed and your projects are separate, and removing RStudio.app leaves all of them in place. What goes with RStudio is its own state: open documents, history and settings, kept in two hidden folders in your home folder. Save your scripts and decide whether you want that state back before you delete anything. This guide covers the RStudio Desktop disk image from Posit and the Homebrew cask rstudio.

Save your work first

Save every open script and R Markdown or Quarto document to a file inside your project. RStudio keeps information about open documents in its state folder, so a document you never saved to disk may exist only there.

Posit's guide to resetting RStudio's state separates two folders on macOS:

  • ~/.local/share/rstudio holds internal state: open documents, log files and other state information.
  • ~/.config/rstudio holds your user preferences, kept apart so a state reset does not lose your settings.

Posit recommends renaming these folders rather than deleting them, so you can go back if something is missing. Copy ~/.config/rstudio somewhere safe if you want your settings on a new install.

Quit RStudio and remove the app

  1. Quit RStudio from the RStudio menu. If it asks to save the workspace or documents, answer before it closes.
  2. Search Activity Monitor for RStudio and check that RStudio and its Helper processes have exited.
  3. Move RStudio from Finder's Applications folder to the Trash.

The recorded tests found no login item, background item or launch agent from RStudio.

R stays installed after this. If you also want to remove R, that is a separate installation with its own packages; do it only once you are sure no other tool, such as Positron or a script scheduler, still uses it.

Where RStudio keeps its data

Open each path with Shift + Command + G in Finder and skip the ones that do not exist. The first two come from Posit's guide; the rest were seen on the test Mac.

Location What it holds What to do
~/.config/rstudio User preferences Back up if you want your settings back; remove for a clean start
~/.local/share/rstudio Open documents, history, logs and other state Rename or copy it first; remove when you no longer need it
~/Library/Application Support/RStudio The Electron shell's data, under 200 KB in the tests Safe to remove after quitting
~/Library/Preferences/com.rstudio.desktop.plist Additional preferences such as window size and rendering mode, per Posit Remove for a clean start
~/.rstudio-desktop Named in the Homebrew zap list; the tested version did not create it Check it if present

Your projects, the .Rproj files and any .Rhistory or .RData files inside them belong to you and stay where they are.

Check the result

Run these read-only commands after the app is in the Trash:

pgrep -il rstudio
ls -d ~/.config/rstudio ~/.local/share/rstudio ~/.rstudio-desktop
command -v R
  • No output from pgrep means RStudio is no longer running. A listed process means RStudio or one of its sessions is still open; quit it before touching its state.
  • ls prints each folder that still exists and reports "No such file or directory" for the rest. A surviving ~/.config/rstudio is expected if you kept your settings.
  • command -v R printing a path means R is still installed, which is what you want if you only removed the editor. No output means the current shell cannot find R; it does not prove R's files are gone.

If you installed it with Homebrew

The rstudio cask asks RStudio to quit before uninstalling, and its zap list holds a single path, ~/.rstudio-desktop. Running brew uninstall --cask --zap rstudio yourself moves that folder to the Trash, whatever you selected in Mole, and leaves ~/.config/rstudio and ~/.local/share/rstudio in place. To leave it alone:

brew uninstall --cask rstudio

Mole adds --zap only when every path on the zap list sits inside ~/Library, none of them touches a row you left unchecked, and no other installed app claims them. ~/.rstudio-desktop is outside ~/Library, so Mole removes a Homebrew install of RStudio without --zap.

What Mole lists

For RStudio from Posit's download:

  • ~/.config/rstudio, ~/.local/share/rstudio and ~/Library/Application Support/RStudio are listed but not selected, so your settings and state stay unless you tick them. The Chromium cache folders inside the last one, such as Cache and Code Cache, are separate rows selected by default.
  • The com.rstudio.desktop preferences file, the recent-documents list and the temporary caches filed under the bundle ID are selected by default.
  • ~/.rstudio-desktop, R, your R packages and your projects are not listed.

What this test covered

On September 21, 2026, RStudio was copied from Posit's disk image into Applications, opened without creating a project, and uninstalled with a Preview build of Mole 1.15 with everything ticked; there was no Homebrew receipt. Its Application Support folder, preferences and temporary caches went to the Trash, and an empty ~/.config/rstudio stayed because Mole did not list it then. On September 26, 2026, RStudio was installed again from the same Posit download, opened once, and removed with a development build of Mole with every row ticked. Mole's Status view showed it as one row of 5 processes, about 89 MB. All 10 items went to the Trash, ~/.config/rstudio included, and no process or startup item was left. This time the first launch also wrote ~/.local/share/rstudio, which stayed and is why Mole lists that folder. R, packages, projects and the Homebrew cask were not tested.