I have downloaded and tried Atom - very nice. Now that I’ve satisfied my curiosity, I’d like to completely remove it from my Mac.
It seems that it has installed things all over the place: command-line tools, invisible folder, in my home directory, etc. Is there an uninstaller? Failing that, are there instructions anywhere for making sure we delete all traces of the app from my Mac?
Any guidance is greatly appreciated.
Well, I am not a developer of atom, but I’d say that is a basic concept of OS X: applications might create files like preferences files etc. which are not removed when an application is uninstalled, but do not harm the system (unlike, for example, entries in the windows registry which should be removed).
Nonetheless, I guess trashing the app, removing ~/.atom and ~/Library/Preferences/com.github.atom.plist should take care of the files.
Removing the first one can only be done via the Terminal, just type rm -r ~/.atom. For the second one you can use the Finder, just use Go -> Go to Folder from the menubar, then type ~/Library/Preferences there and look for the file and delete it.
As for the command-line tools, they are installed manually via the menubar (Atom -> Install Shell Commands). I’d assume there is an uninstall command there, but I haven’t installed them so far so I don’t know for sure.
Thank you for the guidance!
I had already noticed the ~/.atom directory, and that is what made me most concerned about what else might be lurking around my system.
In regards to the command line tools, when I launched Atom for the first time it seems to have installed these tools by itself, without asking me first. If I open a Terminal window, and type which atom, it gives me /usr/local/bin/atom. Looking into my /usr/local/bin, I see that there is also another tool there now called apm.
So, so far it seems that in order to completely uninstall Atom, we have to:
.atom directory from the home folder/usr/local/bin/atom tool/usr/local/bin/apm tool~/Library/Preferences/com.github.atom.plist fileIs that it, or is there anything else that should be removed?
Once again, many thanks
Interesting, I have neither /usr/local/bin/atom or /usr/local/bin/apm on my system. Wonder why that is…
As far as I am aware, you should have got everything, yes. If you are still concerned I would recommend an application like EasyFind and searching for atom, I guess everything should turn up there.
I agree that atom should ask about installing stuff to /usr/local/bin (and I think, usually, it does). As for the whole .atom-discussion… Why pollute ~ with ~/.atom? … . As for the other files they don’t hurt the OS and every OS X app does it, so I’d say atom can’t really be blamed for them.
There is one more directory you need to delete: ~/Library/Application Support/com.github.atom.ShipIt
Is there really not command like atom uninstall or something? Doing that manually is annoying.
Lol. I’m trying to uninstall it so I can install it again because my git diff package is not working properly and I wanted to see if that would help :’(
Other things to try and re-install it or fix my actual problem are welcome 
Yes, see my response in the other topic for suggestions on fixing your actual problem 
Atom also creates ~Library/Application Support/Atom/ which should be deleted if you want a clean system.
In other words, the complete (?) list is:
rm -rf ~/.atomrm /usr/local/bin/atomrm /usr/local/bin/apmrm ~/Library/Preferences/com.github.atom.plistrm ~/Library/Application Support/com.github.atom.ShipItrm -rf ~/Library/Application Support/Atom/rm -rf ~/.atom
rm /usr/local/bin/atom
rm /usr/local/bin/apm
rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.github.atom.plist
rm ~/Library/Application Support/com.github.atom.ShipIt
rm -rf ~/Library/Application Support/Atom/
I couldn’t stand the insane lag Atom was causing to my entire system, so I decided to uninstall it. Many thanks to those who posted here giving directions. I removed all of these files:
~/.atom
/usr/local/bin/atom
/usr/local/bin/apm
/Applications/Atom.app
~/Library/Preferences/com.github.atom.plist
~/Library/Application Support/com.github.atom.ShipIt
~/Library/Application Support/Atom
~/Library/Saved Application State/com.github.atom.savedState
~/Library/Caches/com.github.atom
~/Library/Caches/Atom
Hopefully, that’s all of them.
Note: After removing Atom, I did a fresh install with no plugins and it was running smoothly once more. So, be careful which plugins you decide to install.
HI there, im trying to uninstall atom and reinstall fresh, but everytime i reinstalled after uninstalling with apps like appzapper or appcleaner (checking every file they suggest me) i reinstall and get my pass configuration. Every single package i installed in the pass and every theme.
I wanna know can i uninstall everything and get the fresh install im looking for to get.
The instructions above talk about what to delete to destroy everything. The most important part for what you’re asking is to delete the ~/.atom directory. That’s where your packages and configuration are stored.
im not familiar with the terminal, could you help me with that? i can see is not complicated but i want to make sure im writing the right stuff and not touching/removing anything else.
The command to delete what needs to be deleted from the Terminal is also one that is really dangerous because if you mistype it, very very very bad things can happen. But, if knowing that you still want to do it (and you have a recent Time Machine backup), here’s the command:
Don’t use this unless you know what you’re doing
rm -rf ~/.atom