Uninstall Obsidian on Mac
An Obsidian vault is the folder where you keep your notes. Removing the editor does not require deleting that folder; a later installation can open it again. Back up every vault before you start. These steps cover the official download and the Homebrew cask.
Find and back up your vault
Locate the current vault in Obsidian, quit the app, and copy the whole vault folder. Keep notes, attachments, and the hidden .obsidian configuration together. Press Shift + Command + . in Finder to reveal hidden files. Copying only Markdown files can miss attachments and plugin settings. How Obsidian stores data
If a vault lives in iCloud Drive (Obsidian's help sets these up under iCloud Drive › Obsidian), make sure every file has finished downloading, then copy the vault to a folder outside iCloud Drive and open the copy. Copy rather than move: moving a folder out of iCloud Drive removes it from iCloud and from your other devices. Sync your notes across devices
Remove the app and keep your notes
Quit Obsidian and move it from Applications to the Trash. A vault should not be treated as an app cache.
Where Obsidian keeps its own data
Obsidian keeps app-wide settings apart from your vaults:
| Location | What it holds | What to do |
|---|---|---|
Each vault's .obsidian folder |
Settings, hotkeys, themes and community plugins for that vault | Keep it with the vault |
~/Library/Application Support/obsidian |
Obsidian's global settings, not your notes | Remove it only for a clean reinstall |
~/Library/Preferences/md.obsidian.plist |
App preferences | Safe to remove |
~/Library/Saved Application State/md.obsidian.savedState |
Window state | Safe to remove |
Obsidian's help names the global settings folder, and it warns against creating a vault inside it. Deleting that folder does not touch a vault stored elsewhere: after a reinstall, open the vault again with Manage Vaults and Open folder as vault. Manage vaults
Check the result
Run these read-only commands in Terminal. Replace VAULT_PATH with the path of your backup copy:
pgrep -ilf "Obsidian.app"
ls -d "$HOME/Library/Application Support/obsidian"
ls -a "VAULT_PATH"
No output from pgrep means Obsidian is no longer running. For the second command, "No such file or directory" means the global settings are gone, and a listed path means they are still there. The last command should list your notes and a .obsidian entry; if .obsidian is missing, the backup lost its vault settings and plugins.
Open your backup in Finder and inspect a few notes and their attachments. If you use sync, also check recent changes on another device; sync is not a substitute for an independent backup.
If the old vault is missing after reinstalling
Locate Markdown notes, attachments, and the hidden .obsidian folder together in the backed-up vault. Open that existing vault in Obsidian rather than creating an empty vault with the same name over its location. If plugins are missing, check whether the backup contains .obsidian/plugins; notes alone cannot restore them.
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 obsidian yourself runs the cask's zap list on its own, whatever you selected in Mole. It includes ~/Library/Application Support/obsidian, the preferences and the window state, but no vault. The cask also installs the obsidian command-line link, which goes with the app. Homebrew Obsidian cask
To keep the global settings folder:
brew uninstall --cask obsidian
What Mole lists
Preferences and saved window state are selected by default. With Remove data and settings with apps off (the default), ~/Library/Application Support/obsidian is listed but not selected, keeping global settings for a reinstall. Turning it on can preselect this app-owned data, so untick it if you want to keep those settings. Chromium caches inside it are separate rows selected by default. Mole does not list vaults in folders you chose.
What this test covered
The recorded uninstall used the Homebrew cask on September 17, 2026, with a development build of Mole. On September 26, 2026, Obsidian 1.13.7 from its official disk image was installed, opened once and removed with a development build of Mole with every row ticked. Mole's Status page showed Obsidian as one row of six processes. All 12 items, the app and ~/Library/Application Support/obsidian included, went to the Trash, none of them was still on disk afterwards, and no login item or launch agent appeared. No vault was created in either test, and sync or data recovery was not tested.