How to Find Leftover App Files on Mac (Step-by-Step)

You uninstalled something three months ago. You can’t quite remember what it was — some IDE you tested for a weekend, maybe a video tool that didn’t work out. Today you opened ~/Library/Application Support for an unrelated reason and saw a 4 GB folder with its name on it.

That’s a leftover. Here’s how to find them all.

What you’re looking for

Leftover files are anything an app wrote to your library that wasn’t removed when you trashed the app. The categories:

• App Support data (~/Library/Application Support)
• Cache files (~/Library/Caches)
• Preference plists (~/Library/Preferences)
• Sandboxed app containers (~/Library/Containers)
• Group containers shared between apps (~/Library/Group Containers)
• Saved window state (~/Library/Saved Application State)
• Log files (~/Library/Logs)
• WebKit storage (~/Library/WebKit)
• HTTP storage and cookies (~/Library/HTTPStorages, ~/Library/Cookies)
• Auto-start helpers (~/Library/LaunchAgents, /Library/LaunchAgents, /Library/LaunchDaemons)

Plus the system library at /Library/ for anything that was installed with admin rights — Adobe, Microsoft, anti-cheat tools, Office update daemons.

Step 1: Open the user library

Finder hides ~/Library by default. To get to it:

• Open Finder
• Press Cmd+Shift+G
• Type ~/Library and press return

You’ll land in your user library. This is the main hunting ground.

Alternative: hold the Option key and click Go in the Finder menu bar. The Library option appears.

Step 2: List your installed apps

Before hunting, you need to know what apps are actually still installed. Two ways:

• Open /Applications in Finder. Note the names.
• In Terminal: ls /Applications — gives you a clean list to compare against.

Anything in ~/Library/Application Support that isn’t on your installed list is a leftover candidate.

Step 3: Scan Application Support

This is the biggest source of leftovers and the easiest to clean up.

1. Open ~/Library/Application Support in Finder.
2. View → as List, then click the Size column to sort by size.
3. For each folder, ask yourself: “Do I still have this app?” Check /Applications if unsure.
4. For folders belonging to apps that are gone, drag them to the Trash.

The folder names are usually obvious — “Slack”, “Figma”, “Adobe”. Sometimes they’re not — “FabFilter”, “Sketch Symbols Cache”. When you can’t remember what an app was, search the folder name on Google. The first result is usually the app’s website.

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Step 4: Scan Caches

Same process for ~/Library/Caches. Folders here are usually named by bundle ID rather than display name (com.apple.Safari, com.tinyspeck.slackmacgap).

If you don’t recognize a cache folder by name:

• Folders starting with com.apple.* are macOS itself — leave them alone
• Folders matching apps in /Applications — leave them, they’re active caches
• Everything else is a leftover candidate

Cache folders are sometimes huge — Spotify’s cache can be 10+ GB on its own. If you’ve already uninstalled Spotify and the cache is still there, it’s just dead weight.

Step 5: Check Preferences and Containers

~/Library/Preferences is full of .plist files named by bundle ID. These are tiny — usually a few KB each — but there can be hundreds. They’re easy to identify:

• File named com.<vendor>.<app>.plist for an app you’ve uninstalled
• Drag to Trash

~/Library/Containers is the same idea but the folders are larger (sandboxed app data). If you see com.figma.Desktop in containers but no Figma in /Applications, that’s a leftover.

Step 6: Group Containers and Saved State

~/Library/Group Containers has names like group.com.adobe.AdobeMobileApps. These are shared between an app and its extensions. If neither the app nor its extension is installed, the group container is orphaned.

~/Library/Saved Application State has folders ending in .savedState. They’re tiny but pile up. Anything matching a bundle ID for a deleted app can go.

Step 7: Check LaunchAgents

This is the one most people skip and the one that actually affects performance.

Visit:

• ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
• /Library/LaunchAgents/
• /Library/LaunchDaemons/ (system-wide, requires admin to remove)

Each .plist file in these folders is registered with launchd to start a process at login or on a schedule. Open one in TextEdit and look at the <string> value under ProgramArguments — that’s the executable path. If the path points at an app or helper that no longer exists, that’s an orphan.

A common example: you uninstall an app months ago, but its .plist is still in ~/Library/LaunchAgents trying to launch a now-missing helper at every login. The result is silent errors in the system log and a fractionally slower boot.

To find dead LaunchAgents in Terminal:

launchctl list | grep -v "0\s"

Anything with a non-zero exit code is failing. Many of those are orphans.

Step 8: Logs and other strays

~/Library/Logs accumulates per-app log folders. Old ones are easy to spot — sort by Date Modified.

~/Library/WebKit and ~/Library/HTTPStorages have folders for every Electron-style app that’s used embedded web views. Discord, Slack, Spotify, Notion, Figma — all leave caches here.

~/Library/Cookies has small files named by bundle ID.

For any of these, the same rule applies: if there’s no matching app in /Applications, it’s a leftover.

A real example

I cleaned up a 5-year-old MacBook recently. The leftovers I found:

• ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/ — 8 GB (last Adobe app uninstalled 18 months ago)
• ~/Library/Application Support/Sketch/ — 2 GB
• ~/Library/Caches/com.spotify.client/ — 4 GB (no Spotify installed)
• ~/Library/Caches/com.tinyspeck.slackmacgap/ — 1.5 GB (Slack reinstalled, old cache from previous install)
• ~/Library/Containers/com.unity3d.UnityHub/ — 600 MB
• Five LaunchAgents pointing at missing apps
• 47 .plist preference files for various dead apps

Total recovery: about 17 GB. Took 35 minutes.

Don’t dig through ~/Library yourselfSweep hunts down every leftover file an uninstaller misses. Free download for Mac →

What to leave alone

A few categories of files in ~/Library look like leftovers but aren’t safe to delete:

1. Anything in ~/Library/Mobile Documents — that’s iCloud Drive
2. Anything starting with com.apple.* — macOS itself
3. Anything in ~/Library/Keychains — your saved passwords
4. Anything in ~/Library/Mail — your email
5. Anything in ~/Library/Messages — your iMessage history
6. Anything in ~/Library/Calendars — your calendar data

When in doubt, leave it. The leftovers worth cleaning up are obvious third-party app residue.

Doing it with Sweep

Sweep’s leftover-files scan covers exactly the locations above and identifies orphans by cross-referencing with installed apps. It also catches LaunchAgents that point at missing executables, which is the part most manual cleanups miss.

The preview shows everything with sizes before deleting. You can untick anything you want to keep.

For most people, the manual hunt is fine the first time — partly so you understand what’s actually happening on your Mac. After that, an uninstaller earns its keep by saving the 30 minutes per cleanup pass.

Quick checklist

• Open ~/Library (Cmd+Shift+G in Finder)
• Note your installed apps in /Applications
• Check Application Support, Caches, Preferences, Containers, Group Containers, Saved Application State, Logs, WebKit, HTTPStorages, Cookies
• Check ~/Library/LaunchAgents, /Library/LaunchAgents, /Library/LaunchDaemons
• Delete anything obviously orphaned, leave anything ambiguous
• Empty the Trash

Or run Sweep and review the preview. Whichever’s faster.