How to uninstall Surge on Mac

Quit Surge before removing it, and decide first whether you want to keep its data folder, ~/Library/Application Support/com.nssurge.surge-mac. Mole keeps that folder on every uninstall, so removing it is your call. If you ever let Surge install its privileged helper, that helper stays too: Mole never lists or removes Surge's helper. This guide covers the download from Surge's website and the Homebrew cask surge.

Quit Surge

Quit Surge from its menu bar icon, then check that no Surge process is left with the command in "Check the result".

Remove the app

Move Surge.app from Applications to the Trash. Surge Dashboard lives inside Surge.app and goes with it.

Where the data lives

These are the folders Surge's own reset guide deletes, plus the extra paths in Homebrew's zap list.

Surge's reset guide also lists com.nssurge.surge-dashboard preferences and an Application Support folder under that name. Surge: Mac reset

If Surge's helper is installed

Mole's administrator helper refuses Surge's files by name, so Mole never shows the helper as a row. Homebrew's uninstall step for Surge unloads the launchd job com.nssurge.surge-mac.helper and deletes /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/com.nssurge.surge-mac.helper; for a website install, doing the same by hand needs an administrator account.

If you installed it with Homebrew

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

The surge cask's plain uninstall step unloads and deletes the helper, and removing the cask also removes the Surge Dashboard.app link in Applications and the surge-cli and surge-dhcpd links in Homebrew's bin and sbin. Its zap list deletes every data path in the table above plus all com.nssurge.surge* preferences and saved window state; brew uninstall --cask --zap surge removes them, whatever you ticked in Mole, including the data folder Mole keeps. Mole leaves --zap out whenever that data folder exists, because it is on the keep list, and whenever Application Support/Surge is unticked. Homebrew surge cask

To remove the app, links and helper but keep your data:

brew uninstall --cask surge

Check the result

pgrep -il Surge
launchctl list | grep -i nssurge
ls -l /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/com.nssurge.surge-mac.helper
ls -d "$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.nssurge.surge-mac"

No output from pgrep means Surge is not running. No output from launchctl list means no Surge job is loaded in your session. ls -l on the helper reports "No such file or directory" if it was never installed or has been removed, and prints the file if it is still there. ls -d printing the data folder is expected after a Mole uninstall.

What Mole lists

• The preferences file, Caches, HTTPStorages, ~/Library/Logs/Surge and the Bugsnag folders for com.nssurge.surge-mac are listed and selected by default.
• ~/Library/Application Support/Surge is listed and not selected by default.
• ~/Library/Application Support/com.nssurge.surge-mac is on Mole's built-in keep list and is never removed.
• The privileged helper and its launchd job are never listed.

What this test covered

On September 23, 2026, Surge 6.9.1 was installed and uninstalled with a development build of Mole whose test hook ticks every listed row, so the run shows what was listed and removed, not the default ticks; the default selection above comes from Mole's rules. The helper was never approved, so it was never installed and its removal was not tested. ~/Library/Application Support/com.nssurge.surge-mac was skipped by the keep list. The two bugsnag-shared-com.nssurge.surge-mac folders were not listed in that run; Mole's rules were then extended to list them, and that change has not been checked on a released build. Signing in, Enhanced Mode and the Dashboard were not tested.