How to uninstall Spark Desktop on Mac

This guide covers Readdle's Spark Desktop email client (bundle id com.readdle.SparkDesktop), downloaded from sparkmailapp.com. It is not Shadow Lab's Spark, a keyboard-shortcut manager that happens to share the name. In Homebrew, spark resolves to the spark-app cask, which is Shadow Lab's app; Readdle's Spark Desktop is the readdle-spark cask. Your email itself stays on your mail server either way; removing accounts from Spark or removing the app does not delete anything from your inbox.

Remove your accounts, then quit

  1. In Spark, click Spark in the menu bar and choose Accounts, select the account you want to remove, and click the minus button, then confirm. This unlinks the account from Spark without deleting mail from the server. (Removing an email account from Spark)
  2. Quit Spark from its menu.
  3. Check Activity Monitor for any remaining Spark process.
  4. Move Spark from Finder's Applications folder to the Trash.
  5. Open System Settings › General › Login Items & Extensions and turn off a Spark entry if one is listed. In the recorded test, no Spark Desktop login item was registered at all.

Readdle's current published clean-install instructions describe an older release called Spark Classic, with a Group Containers folder named for that build; this guide only lists the paths recorded for the current Spark Desktop app, since the Classic folder name does not match this build's bundle id.

Where Spark Desktop keeps local data

Location What it holds What to do
~/Library/Application Support/Spark Desktop Spark's local app data Review before removing; back up anything you have not synced elsewhere
~/Library/Logs/SparkMacDesktop Log files Safe to remove

Check the result

Run these read-only commands in Terminal:

pgrep -il spark
launchctl list | grep -i readdle
ls -d "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Spark Desktop"
ls -d "$HOME/Library/Logs/SparkMacDesktop"
  • No output from pgrep means Spark is not running.
  • No output from launchctl list means no Readdle login item is loaded in this session.
  • "No such file or directory" from either ls means that folder is gone; a printed path means it is still there.

If you installed it with Homebrew

Readdle's Spark Desktop is the readdle-spark cask. Do not use spark or spark-app for it: that cask installs Shadow Lab's Spark, a different app with its own zap list.

Mole skips --zap when its list reaches unchecked or shared data, or cannot be fully checked, and still cleans the leftovers you selected.

The readdle-spark cask's zap list includes ~/Library/Application Support/Spark Desktop, ~/Library/Application Support/com.readdle.SparkDesktop.helper, ~/Library/Caches/Spark Desktop, ~/Library/Caches/com.readdle.SparkDesktop.helper, ~/Library/Logs/Spark Desktop, ~/Library/Containers/com.readdle.SparkDesktop.share, ~/Library/Application Scripts/com.readdle.SparkDesktop.share, ~/Library/HTTPStorages/com.readdle.SparkDesktop*, the Spark preference files, its saved window state and its recent-documents list. Application Support/Spark Desktop is an unticked row in Mole, so Mole leaves --zap out unless you tick it. Running brew uninstall --cask --zap readdle-spark yourself moves everything on that list to the Trash, whatever you selected in Mole.

To skip the zap step:

brew uninstall --cask readdle-spark

What Mole lists

For a Spark Desktop app downloaded from Readdle:

  • ~/Library/Application Support/Spark Desktop is a display-name folder, so it is listed but not selected by default; it went to Trash in the recorded test because the reviewer selected every review row.
  • ~/Library/Logs/SparkMacDesktop is a name-variant folder that Mole treats as selected by default.

What this test covered

Spark Desktop 3.31.0, downloaded from Readdle's site (not Shadow Lab's Spark), was installed and uninstalled on September 20, 2026 with Mole 1.15.0 (build 280) and Full Disk Access, as part of a ten-app batch, with the reviewer selecting every review row. The account was not signed in during the test, so mail sync and account removal through Spark's own UI were not verified in this run. ~/Library/Application Support/Spark Desktop (about 9.6 MB) went to the Trash; the run did not list ~/Library/Logs/SparkMacDesktop, a later full-disk rescan of the same Mac found it, and it was added to Mole as a selected-by-default row. No login item was found registered for Spark Desktop either before or after removal. Spark Desktop