How to uninstall Tiny Shield on Mac

Tiny Shield is Proxyman's network monitor and firewall for macOS, with the bundle ID com.proxyman.ProxymanGuard. It is a different product from the Proxyman HTTP debugging app, which has its own guide. Tiny Shield does its filtering in a Network Extension that macOS runs as root, and its documentation says to use Tiny Shield's uninstall command to remove the app and its extension together. Deleting only the app leaves that extension running: in this test it was still active after the app was in the Trash. Its connection records live in a system folder, /Library/Application Support/ProxymanGuard. This guide covers the app from tinyshield.proxyman.com and the Homebrew cask tiny-shield.

Before you remove it

1. If you bought Tiny Shield PRO and want to use the seat on another Mac, choose Tiny Shield › Tiny Shield License…, open More and select Remove License…, as the license page describes. Uninstalling the app does not free the seat.
2. If you want to set up the same rules again later, note what is on your Block List now. Tiny Shield keeps its connection history on your Mac, and the uninstall deletes its data.

Remove Tiny Shield and its Network Extension

1. Open Tiny Shield and choose Help › Uninstall TinyShield…. According to the vendor's issue tracker, this asks for confirmation, removes the Network Extension, deletes /Library/Application Support/ProxymanGuard, /Library/Application Support/com.proxyman.ProxymanGuard and the com.proxyman.ProxymanGuard folders in your user Library, then quits. Enter your Mac password if macOS asks.
2. Drag Tiny Shield from Applications to the Trash if it is still there.
3. Open System Settings › General › Login Items & Extensions, open Network Extensions and check that Tiny Shield is no longer listed. If you turned on Tiny Shield's Launch at Login option, also check that it is gone from Open at Login.

If you already deleted the app and the extension is still listed, put Tiny Shield back from the Trash (or download it again from tinyshield.proxyman.com into Applications), open it and run Help › Uninstall TinyShield…, then remove the app. Turning the switch off in Network Extensions stops Tiny Shield's monitoring and blocking, but the vendor's uninstall command is what removes the extension. If macOS reports that the extension will be removed after a restart, restart the Mac.

Where the data lives

A temporary cache for com.proxyman.ProxymanGuard also sits in your per-user cache folder (getconf DARWIN_USER_CACHE_DIR prints it). Leave Proxyman's com.proxyman.NSProxy folders alone if you still use Proxyman.

Check the result

pgrep -il 'tiny shield|proxymanguard'
systemextensionsctl list | grep -i proxymanguard
ls -ld "/Library/Application Support/ProxymanGuard" "$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.proxyman.ProxymanGuard"

• No output from pgrep means neither the app nor its extension is running. A line naming com.proxyman.ProxymanGuard.NetworkExtension means the extension is still loaded.
• No output from systemextensionsctl means the extension is gone. A line ending in [activated enabled] means it is still installed and filtering; run the vendor's uninstall command as described above. A line about waiting to uninstall on reboot clears after a restart.
• A path printed by ls still exists. No such file or directory means the path is gone.

If you installed it with Homebrew

brew uninstall --cask tiny-shield

The cask has no uninstall stanza beyond the app, so this command removes only Tiny Shield.app; run Tiny Shield's own uninstall command first so the Network Extension goes too. Its zap list trashes /Library/Application Support/com.proxyman.ProxymanGuard and the user-Library application support folder, cache, web storage and preferences for com.proxyman.ProxymanGuard. It does not name /Library/Application Support/ProxymanGuard, where the test found the connection records, and it does not remove the extension, so brew uninstall --cask --zap tiny-shield does not finish the job either, and it does not read Mole's checkboxes. Mole adds --zap only when every zap path is inside ~/Library; this cask names a path under /Library, so Mole never runs its zap and removes the rows you selected itself.

What Mole lists

Mole selects the app, ~/Library/Application Support/com.proxyman.ProxymanGuard, ~/Library/Caches/com.proxyman.ProxymanGuard, ~/Library/HTTPStorages/com.proxyman.ProxymanGuard, ~/Library/Preferences/com.proxyman.ProxymanGuard.plist and the temporary cache. When Tiny Shield ignores the quit request, Mole force quits it before moving the app.

Mole does not remove or list the Network Extension, and it does not list /Library/Application Support/ProxymanGuard: Mole keeps folders with proxy and VPN names out of the uninstall list. Remove both with Tiny Shield's own uninstall command. These defaults assume “Remove data and settings with apps” in General › Cleaning is off; turning it on changes nothing here, since every listed row is already selected.

What this test covered

On October 20, 2026, the test removed Tiny Shield 1.18.1 for Apple silicon, already installed and in use on the test Mac, with a source-built Mole that had Full Disk Access. Tiny Shield ignored the quit request and was force quit. Mole listed six rows including the 79.9 MB app, all selected by default, and moved all of them to the Trash; they matched the five user-domain items a search by product name and team found before removal, and a search afterwards found none left there. Two items stayed: the Network Extension, whose root process kept running and which systemextensionsctl still reported as activated and enabled, and /Library/Application Support/ProxymanGuard with its 3.2 MB flow.sqlite. Status showed the app as one Tiny Shield row of 304 MB and the extension as a separate row under its bundle ID. No login item was registered before or after. The app updates through Sparkle, and no update was run. Tiny Shield's own uninstall command, a Homebrew-managed uninstall and Mole's notarized release build were not tested.