Uninstall Calibre on Mac

Find out where your calibre library actually lives before removing the app. Your books and their catalog live outside calibre's own application data, and nothing here removes them, but it is worth confirming their location first. These steps cover calibre installed from the official disk image and from the Homebrew cask calibre; the recorded test used the Homebrew cask.

Your library is not application data

By default calibre creates ~/Calibre Library on first launch and stores every book plus the metadata.db catalog database there; you can also point calibre at a different folder, and Preferences shows the current path if you are not sure. This folder sits directly in your home directory, outside ~/Library, so removing calibre never touches it, but back it up yourself before any cleanup, since it is the one thing here that cannot be re-downloaded. If you use more than one library, check each one's location the same way.

Quit and remove the app

Quit E-book Viewer separately if it is open, then quit calibre from its app menu. Quitting calibre stops the content server managed by its main window, but not a separate calibre-server you launched yourself. Next, move calibre from Applications to the Trash (official download), or let Homebrew remove it (see below).

Where calibre keeps its data

calibre's own manual confirms ~/Library/Preferences/calibre as its configuration folder, including plugins. calibre customization reference

Check the result

Run these read-only commands in Terminal:

pgrep -ilf calibre
launchctl list | grep -i kovidgoyal
ls -d ~/Library/Preferences/calibre
ls -d ~/Library/Application\ Support/calibre-ebook.com
ls -d ~/Calibre\ Library

No output from pgrep means calibre is not running. No output from launchctl list means the current user session has no matching loaded calibre job. The two ls -d lines for Preferences and Application Support either list the folder or report "No such file or directory". The last command checks your library folder; a printed path only confirms that directory exists. Open the actual configured library in Finder to check its books, including any custom library folder.

If you installed it with Homebrew

Mole skips --zap when its list reaches unchecked or shared data, or cannot be fully checked, and still cleans the leftovers you selected.

Running brew uninstall --cask --zap calibre yourself runs the cask's zap list, which moves ~/Library/Preferences/calibre, ~/Library/Application Support/calibre-ebook.com, ~/Library/Caches/calibre, and both apps' preferences and saved-window-state files to the Trash, whatever you have ticked in Mole. Your ~/Calibre Library folder is never in the zap list and stays untouched either way. Back up any plugins or recipes first, or run the app-only removal below. Homebrew calibre cask

brew uninstall --cask calibre

What Mole lists

For calibre installed from the official download:

• ~/Library/Preferences/calibre and ~/Library/Caches/calibre are selected by default, along with ~/Library/Preferences/net.kovidgoyal.calibre.plist and its saved window state. ~/Library/Preferences/calibre holds your plugins and custom recipes, so untick it if you have not backed them up.
• Mole can also list ~/Library/Application Support/calibre-ebook.com and the E-book Viewer preferences and saved state, taken from Homebrew's zap list for this app, but leaves them unselected while Remove data and settings with apps is off, the default. Enabling that option can preselect eligible app-owned data; check these rows if you want to keep them.
• The default ~/Calibre Library is outside the candidate list above. Mole does not search custom folders for libraries.

What this test covered

calibre was installed and removed through the Homebrew cask calibre on September 19, 2026, with an official Mole 277 build; Mole reported it as already covered by its existing rules, so nothing new was added for this app. Homebrew's zap step moved the Caches and Preferences folders to the Trash; the library folder was not collected. A first pass of this test recorded no library folder on disk, which a same-day recheck corrected: ~/Calibre Library (656 KB) was present the whole time, created automatically by calibre's first-launch setup, and Mole's decision not to collect it was already the right one either way. The official disk-image install was not part of this uninstall test.