Alfred: how to uninstall it cleanly

To uninstall Alfred, quit it from the bowler hat in the menu bar, then drag the app from the Applications folder to the Trash. That is the whole procedure Running with Crayons, the developer, publishes in its uninstall help page. What that page does not cover is everything that outlives the app: four settings files in the Library folder, a synced preferences bundle that may live in Dropbox or iCloud Drive, macOS permissions, a login item, and your Powerpack licence. This guide covers each of those, using the developer's own help pages, Apple's documentation and the Homebrew cask definition, all checked on 18 October 2026.

The two steps the developer publishes

The official instructions are short. Click the hat icon in the menu bar and choose Quit. Then drag Alfred from Applications to the Trash. The current download installs as "Alfred 5.app", and the Homebrew cask listed version 5.8.1 on the day of this check.

The same page adds a warning that matters more than the steps:

Do not use an app cleaner. The developer says app cleaners can be overzealous and may remove files that the current version of Alfred needs. If one has already been used, the advice is to check the Trash immediately, drag any Alfred files back out before they are deleted for good, and contact support for help resetting. Restoring from a Time Machine backup taken before the cleaner ran is the other route it suggests.

That warning is aimed mainly at people removing an older version while keeping a newer one. Alfred 3, 4 and 5 store settings in different places, and a cleaner that matches on the name "Alfred" cannot tell which files belong to which version. If the goal is to keep Alfred 5 and remove Alfred 4, drag only the old app to the Trash and stop there.

If the goal is to remove Alfred completely, the app bundle is only the start. The rest of this page goes through what remains, in the order worth handling it.

Decide first: are you removing it or resetting it?

Many people who search for an uninstall actually want a clean start because something stopped working: a hotkey that no longer fires, preferences that do not save, or snippets that no longer expand. The developer treats this as a separate task with its own page, How can I reset Alfred to defaults?, and it is lighter than a full removal.

Goal	What to do	What you lose
Keep Alfred, fix odd behaviour	Quit, delete the four settings files, relaunch	Hotkey, locale and all custom settings
Remove an old version only	Drag the old app to the Trash, no cleaner	Nothing from the current version
Remove Alfred completely	Quit, Trash the app, then clear settings, sync folder, permissions and login item	Everything, unless backed up
Snippets stopped expanding	Reset permissions with tccutil, keep settings	Only the granted permissions

The last row is worth trying before anything else if the complaint is about snippets or simulated keystrokes. The developer's permissions page explains that Alfred can appear to have the right permissions while the related features do not work, most often after a macOS upgrade or a restore from Time Machine. That is fixed without uninstalling, as covered further down.

The four settings locations, and the one extra Homebrew adds

For Alfred 4 and 5, the reset page lists these paths inside your user Library folder:

1. ~/Library/Application Support/Alfred
2. ~/Library/Preferences/com.runningwithcrayons.Alfred-Preferences.plist
3. ~/Library/Preferences/com.alfredapp.Alfred.plist
4. ~/Library/Caches/com.runningwithcrayons.Alfred

Deleting these with Alfred quit returns it to defaults. Deleting them after removing the app finishes the removal. Alfred 3 uses different names that end in "-3" or "Alfred 3", which the same page lists separately.

The Homebrew cask for Alfred has its own list for a full removal, used by its zap option. It includes the Application Support folder, the Caches folder and the Alfred-Preferences plist from above, and adds three more: a cookies file at ~/Library/Cookies/com.runningwithcrayons.Alfred.binarycookies, a preferences file named com.runningwithcrayons.Alfred.plist, and saved window state under ~/Library/Saved Application State. If Alfred was installed with Homebrew, running the cask's uninstall with the zap option removes that whole set and also quits Alfred and removes its login item, as the cask definition specifies.

To reach the Library folder in Finder, hold Option while opening the Go menu. Before deleting anything, copy the Application Support folder somewhere safe if there is any chance you will want your workflows or snippets back. That folder holds the Alfred.alfredpreferences bundle, which is where custom work lives.

If you sync preferences, the important file is elsewhere

Anyone who set up syncing has a second copy of the settings that does not sit in the Library folder at all. The developer's sync guide explains that syncing is set in Alfred's preferences under the Advanced tab with "Set preferences folder…", pointing at a folder in a service such as Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud Drive or OneDrive. The file it creates there is called Alfred.alfredpreferences.

This changes the removal in two ways.

Deleting the local files does not delete the synced bundle. The reset page says that when syncing is on, the files are in the sync folder, for example within Dropbox. If the aim is to remove every trace, that bundle has to be deleted from the cloud folder too. If the aim is to keep a backup, leaving it there is the easiest backup possible.

Deleting the synced bundle affects every Mac that uses it. If two Macs share one sync folder and Alfred is being removed from only one of them, do not touch the bundle. Remove the app and the local Library files on that Mac only.

The guide also lists settings that are never synced, because they are kept per Mac: the main hotkey, the default search scope, the selected theme, Clipboard History and its data, Snippet Auto-Expansion and auto-update settings among them. Clipboard History data therefore stays local, which matters if removal is partly about privacy. It is cleared when the local Application Support folder is deleted, not by deleting the synced bundle.

Your Powerpack licence

There is no deactivation step for the Powerpack in the developer's help pages. Activation is done by pasting the licence code into the Powerpack tab of the preferences. The Powerpack help page says the licence is emailed at purchase. If it cannot be found, the advice is to search the inbox for "Alfred Powerpack" in the subject line, and failing that to contact the developer from the email address used to register it. Writing from a different address, the licence recovery page warns, will almost certainly slow things down.

So before deleting anything, find that email and keep it. The licence is the one thing in this whole process that cannot be recreated from the Mac.

For anyone uninstalling because of the price of an upgrade, the shop page on 18 October 2026 listed a Single License at £34 for version 5 and a Mega Supporter licence at £59 with free lifetime upgrades. The page also said that buying now includes a free upgrade to Alfred 6, which the Powerpack page describes as coming this autumn. That may be worth knowing before removing a version 5 licence you already paid for.

Permissions and the login item stay behind

Removing the app does not remove what macOS granted it. The developer's permissions guide lists the ones Alfred asks for: Accessibility for snippet expansion and simulated key events, Full Disk Access for searching browser bookmarks, Contacts, and Automation for AppleScript and Terminal commands. Input Monitoring is sometimes needed as well.

The same guide gives a single command that tells macOS to forget everything granted to Alfred:

tccutil reset All com.runningwithcrayons.Alfred

Run it in Terminal with Alfred quit. On a Mac that is keeping Alfred, it is the fix for snippets that stopped expanding: run it, relaunch, and grant the permissions again from Alfred's General tab with "Request Permissions…". On a Mac that is removing Alfred, it clears the entries from Privacy and Security so the list is not left with an app that no longer exists.

The login item is separate. Apple's guide to Login Items and Extensions puts it under Apple menu, System Settings, General, Login Items and Extensions. An item marked as moved or deleted will not open, but it can still be selected and removed from the Open at Login list with the minus button. Checking this after removal keeps the list honest.

Check the result before moving on

A removal is finished when nothing on the Mac still refers to Alfred. Four quick checks confirm it, and none of them needs extra software.

1. Open Activity Monitor and type Alfred in the search field. Nothing should be listed. If a process remains, the app was not quit before it was moved to the Trash, so quit it there and empty the Trash again.
2. Open System Settings, then Privacy and Security, then Accessibility. Alfred should no longer appear. If it does, the tccutil reset was run before the app was removed, or not at all.
3. Open General, then Login Items and Extensions, and confirm Alfred is gone from Open at Login.
4. In Finder, use Go to Folder with ~/Library/Application Support and confirm there is no Alfred folder. Repeat with ~/Library/Preferences for the plist files.

If all four come back clean, the only copy left is the one you chose to keep: the backup of the preferences bundle, the synced bundle in the cloud folder, or both. Either can be pointed at again from the Advanced tab if Alfred is ever reinstalled.

Removing a launcher frees one slot in the menu bar

Alfred's hat icon is one of the items to the left of the clock, so removing Alfred frees exactly one slot. On a Mac with many menu bar apps, that slot rarely stays empty for long. The next background app installed takes it.

This is a good moment to look at the rest of the row. Apple's menu bar guide explains that holding Command while dragging a system status item lets you reorder it, and dragging it out of the bar removes it. Third party apps often have their own setting to hide the icon, so check the preferences of each one before reaching for another tool.

After that pass, what remains is the middle group: icons clicked a few times a week that do not need to be visible all day. A menu bar organizer keeps those installed and reachable behind a divider, and the Features page shows how hidden icons can still be opened in place. For a side by side list of the paid and free tools in this category with prices and check dates, see How it compares.

What to change first

Find the Powerpack email and back up the Alfred.alfredpreferences bundle. Then quit Alfred, move the app to the Trash, delete the four Library paths, run the tccutil reset, and remove the login item. Leave the synced bundle alone if another Mac still uses it. If the freed slot is the start of a wider menu bar tidy up, Koffret is one way to handle the icons that remain.