Uninstall Hammerspoon on Mac

Press Shift + Command + G in Finder and open ~/.hammerspoon. Copy the entire folder to preserve your Lua scripts, installed Spoons, and init.lua, the file Hammerspoon loads at start (Getting Started). Copying only one Lua script may leave your hotkeys broken after reinstalling. If your scripts save values with hs.settings, those live in Hammerspoon's preferences file, ~/Library/Preferences/org.hammerspoon.Hammerspoon.plist; back it up too. These steps cover the zip from hammerspoon.org and the Homebrew cask.

Quit Hammerspoon and remove the app

1. If you only want to pause automation, quitting the app is enough. To stop it launching at login, turn off that option in Hammerspoon's preferences, or review its entry under System Settings › General › Login Items & Extensions.
2. Quit Hammerspoon from its menu bar icon and confirm that its hotkeys and automation have stopped.
3. Move Hammerspoon from Applications to the Trash.
4. Open System Settings › Privacy & Security › Accessibility, select Hammerspoon, and click the minus button to remove its entry. Do not edit system permission or login databases by hand.

If you installed the hs command-line tool with hs.ipc.cliInstall(), it created links at /usr/local/bin/hs and /usr/local/share/man/man1/hs.1 that point into the app (hs.ipc). Run hs.ipc.cliUninstall() in the Hammerspoon console before removing the app, or delete those two links afterward.

Where Hammerspoon keeps its files

Check the result

pgrep -x Hammerspoon
ls -d ~/.hammerspoon
ls -l /usr/local/bin/hs

No output from pgrep means Hammerspoon has quit. If hotkeys still work after removal, check whether another Hammerspoon installation is running before deleting scripts as a test. A listed ~/.hammerspoon means your scripts are still on disk, which is expected if you kept them. If /usr/local/bin/hs is listed and points into Hammerspoon.app, it is a stale link; No such file or directory means it is gone. A historical Accessibility entry does not prove scripts are still running.

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.

If you run brew uninstall --cask --zap hammerspoon yourself, the zap list runs regardless of which rows you check in Mole. Its zap list includes ~/.hammerspoon with your scripts and the preferences file with its hs.settings values, along with caches and saved state. In the recorded test ~/.hammerspoon survived, but do not rely on that. Back both up first, or run brew uninstall --cask hammerspoon without zap to keep them. The cask also links hs into Homebrew's bin folder and removes that link on uninstall.

What Mole lists

The unselected data rows below assume Remove data and settings with apps is off, the default. Turning it on can select eligible app-owned review rows; keep wanted data unchecked. Shared stores and protected data retain individual review or protection.

Mole can list an hs launcher in /usr/local/bin for review when its symbolic-link target points into this Hammerspoon.app. It leaves the link unselected by default; the manual-page link is outside that launcher scan. Hammerspoon

What this test covered

Hammerspoon was installed from the Homebrew cask on September 17, 2026, launched, and uninstalled through Mole while it was running; Mole quit it before removal. Its preferences, cache, and crash folder went. ~/.hammerspoon, which first launch created with an empty Spoons folder, stayed on disk even though the zap list names it; Mole now lists it. Scripts, the hs command, and the Accessibility grant were not tested.