How to uninstall Podman Desktop on Windows

Podman Desktop is the interface; the Podman engine, its machines, and the containers, images and volumes inside them are separate from the app itself. Removing Podman Desktop never touches a running machine or its data. This guide covers Podman Desktop installed per-user from the RedHat.Podman-Desktop winget package, and keeps engine removal as a separate, optional step.

Save work and stop machines first

Export or back up anything you need from running containers, then stop the Podman machine you use if you plan to remove the engine too. If you are only removing the desktop interface and want to keep using Podman from the command line, skip the next section entirely.

Quit Podman Desktop

Close the Podman Desktop window. It runs several helper processes alongside the main window, so check Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc) for any Podman Desktop.exe still listed before you uninstall.

Remove the app with its own uninstaller

Go to Settings › Apps › Installed apps, find Podman Desktop, and choose Uninstall, or run:

winget uninstall --id RedHat.Podman-Desktop

Where the data lives

Podman's own configuration lives at ~/.local/share/containers/podman-desktop, according to Podman Desktop's own uninstall page, and can hold extension binaries and plugins under an extensions-storage subfolder there. That folder was not created during this test, so it was not part of what Mole reviewed; check for it yourself if you have installed extensions. Never remove the parent containers folder, since the Podman engine and other container tools can keep data there.

Optional: remove the Podman engine and its machines

Do this only after backing up what you need, since resetting a machine deletes every container, image and volume inside it:

podman machine reset -f

Then remove Podman the way you installed it (its own installer, or winget uninstall --id RedHat.Podman, if you added it separately).

Check the result

Run these read-only commands after the uninstall finishes:

Get-Process "Podman Desktop" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
winget list --id RedHat.Podman-Desktop
Test-Path "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\Podman Desktop"
podman machine list

• No output from Get-Process only means this query observed no matching process; a suppressed error leaves the running state unknown.
• A completed winget list query with no match means the package record is gone; a matching row means the uninstall did not finish.
• Test-Path returning False means the program folder is gone; True means files remain there.
• podman machine list shows the machines you kept if you still have the Podman engine installed; a remaining machine does not mean the Desktop removal failed, since the two are separate.

If you installed it with winget

winget uninstall runs the same NSIS uninstaller Settings › Apps uses and removes the same program files; it does not touch %APPDATA%\Podman Desktop, the Podman engine, or any machine on its own.

What Mole lists

For Podman Desktop installed per-user from winget:

• The program folder and the user Start Menu shortcut are selected by default.
• %LOCALAPPDATA%\podman-desktop-updater, which holds only downloaded update installers, is selected by default.
• %APPDATA%\Podman Desktop is listed but not selected, since it holds settings; the caches inside it (Cache, Code Cache and the GPU-related caches) are separate rows selected by default.
• A podman-desktop:// link registration, a related CLSID entry and a startup entry still pointing at the removed program are listed and selected, each backed up to a .reg file before removal.
• Two Windows Firewall rules the app created are reported in the result so you can see them, but Mole does not remove firewall rules; delete them yourself in Windows Defender Firewall with Advanced Security if you want them gone.

What this test covered

Tested with Podman Desktop 1.29.3 installed through winget, per-user scope. The test installed it from an elevated session, so its uninstaller asked for administrator access; a normal per-user install does not. Removing the Podman engine, its machines and any Kubernetes clusters was not tested.