How to uninstall Stellarium on Mac
Back up your custom landscapes, scripts and settings before uninstalling Stellarium. Its file-layout documentation separates bundled assets from user data. This guide covers the Mac app from the official archive and existing Homebrew installations.
Quit and remove the app
Save your work and quit Stellarium with Cmd + Q. Move the Mac app from Applications to the Trash after checking the backup. Keep separately saved projects and source data in place.
Review local data
~/Library/Application Support/Stellariumis the documented Mac user-data directory, including configuration and custom files. Copy wanted contents before removing it.~/Library/Preferences/Stellariumis also in the cask’s zap list.- The local test saw
~/Library/Caches/stellarium; the Linux~/.stellariumdefault was not created on this Mac. Keep independently saved screenshots and observing material.
After confirming your customization backup and quitting, press Shift + Command + G in Finder to open ~/Library/Application Support/Stellarium, ~/Library/Preferences/Stellarium and ~/Library/Caches/stellarium when present. Move only the Stellarium item you chose to discard to the Trash; keep independently saved images and observing files.
Check the result
pgrep -ifl Stellarium
ls -ld /Applications/Stellarium.app "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Stellarium" "$HOME/Library/Caches/stellarium"
No process output means this name was not found, not that every helper has gone. Check any match against the app’s actual executable path. A missing-path error from ls means only that location is absent; permission errors leave its state unknown. A surviving folder can be intentional data to keep.
If you installed it with Homebrew
The cask has no separate uninstall helper. Zap targets the Stellarium support and preferences directories, including user customizations.
To uninstall without zap, use:
brew uninstall --cask stellarium
Mole checks Homebrew's full removal list and skips --zap when it reaches unchecked data, shared files or anything it cannot verify. It still removes the leftovers you selected. A direct brew uninstall --cask --zap stellarium runs Homebrew’s full zap list without consulting Mole’s checkboxes.
What Mole lists
Mole selects the app and attributable cache/preference rows by default. ~/Library/Application Support/Stellarium is listed unchecked when Remove data and settings with apps in General > Cleaning is off. Turning it on can preselect eligible app data; uncheck wanted customizations to keep them. Your separately saved sky images are not a blanket uninstall target.
What this test covered
On September 21, 2026, Stellarium 26.2.0 from the official universal archive was opened and removed. The recorded select-all run removed the app, 5.8 MB support directory and cache. It did not test a populated custom sky library or a Homebrew installation.