How to uninstall Voicenotes on Mac

Voicenotes keeps your notes and recordings in your Voicenotes account; its FAQ says all notes are secured in the cloud. The Mac app itself leaves only small settings and cache folders behind, so the parts to handle are the permissions you granted it and the account, which removing the app does not touch. This guide covers Voicenotes from its official download and from the Homebrew cask voicenotes.

Before you remove it

  1. Open Voicenotes and check that your latest recordings show up in your account on another device or on the web, so nothing is still waiting on this Mac.
  2. Removing the app does not cancel a subscription or delete your account. Handle those in your Voicenotes account if you are leaving.

Quit Voicenotes and remove the app

  1. Quit Voicenotes from the Voicenotes menu. In the recorded test it ran four processes, including Sparkle's Autoupdate, which Mole's Status page folded into one Voicenotes row.
  2. Search Activity Monitor for Voicenotes and check that nothing is left.
  3. Move Voicenotes from Finder's Applications folder to the Trash.

On first launch the updater loaded two short-lived session jobs, com.voicenotes.app-sparkle-progress and com.voicenotes.app-sparkle-updater; in the test both were gone after the uninstall. No login item appeared.

Remove the permissions you granted

Voicenotes' Mac guide asks for several permissions on first launch, including screen recording and accessibility, and has you add Voicenotes by hand if it does not appear in the list. macOS keeps those entries after the app is gone. Open System Settings › Privacy & Security, look under Microphone, Screen & System Audio Recording and Accessibility, turn off Voicenotes in Microphone, and remove its entry with the minus button or disable access in the other panels where it appears.

Where Voicenotes keeps its data

In Finder, press Shift + Command + G and open each existing path below. Move the chosen Voicenotes files or folders to the Trash, keeping their parent folders, including the shared crash-report parents.

Location What it holds What to do
~/Library/Application Support/Voicenotes The app's local storage and logs, about 60 KB in the test Remove with the app
~/Library/Application Support/com.voicenotes.app Small app support files Remove with the app
~/Library/Caches/com.voicenotes.app App cache Remove with the app
~/Library/Caches/SentryCrash/Voicenotes and ~/Library/Caches/com.crashlytics.data/com.voicenotes.app Crash-report caches Remove with the app; leave the SentryCrash and com.crashlytics.data folders themselves, other apps use them
~/Library/Preferences/com.voicenotes.app.plist App preferences Remove with the app

Check the result

pgrep -il voicenotes
launchctl list | grep -i voicenotes
ls -d "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Voicenotes" "$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.voicenotes.app"
  • No output from pgrep means Voicenotes is not running.
  • If launchctl list succeeds but the filter prints nothing, the current user job list has no line containing voicenotes; that does not prove every updater service has stopped. A command error leaves the state unknown. A com.voicenotes.app-sparkle line means an updater job from this login session is still loaded; it should not survive a log out or restart.
  • ls -d prints each folder that still exists and reports "No such file or directory" for the rest.

If you installed it with Homebrew

The voicenotes cask's zap list is ~/Library/Application Support/Voicenotes and the preferences file. Running brew uninstall --cask --zap voicenotes yourself moves them to the Trash regardless of your Mole checkboxes. Your notes are in your account, not in either one. To remove only the app:

brew uninstall --cask voicenotes

Mole checks the entire cask removal list before using --zap. Any unchecked, shared or unverifiable item prevents it; the app is removed without --zap and the selected leftovers are cleaned separately. Uncheck ~/Library/Application Support/Voicenotes if you want to keep its local data.

What Mole lists

For Voicenotes from the official download:

  • ~/Library/Application Support/Voicenotes is listed for review. With Remove data and settings with apps off it starts unchecked; with it on, eligible app data can start checked. Uncheck the folder to retain local data. Its logs folder is a separate row selected by default.
  • ~/Library/Application Support/com.voicenotes.app, the caches, HTTP storage, preferences and temporary caches filed under com.voicenotes.app, Caches/SentryCrash/Voicenotes and the Crashlytics cache for the app are selected by default.
  • Privacy permissions are not files and are not listed; remove them in System Settings as above.

What this test covered

On September 26, 2026, Voicenotes 2.0.7 was installed from its official zip, opened once without signing in, and uninstalled with a development build of Mole with every row ticked. Status showed one Voicenotes row with four processes using about 77 MB. Ten items went to the Trash, including both Application Support folders, the Sentry and Crashlytics caches and the preferences file, and nothing from the list was left on disk. The two Sparkle session jobs from the first launch were gone after the uninstall. Earlier, on September 22, 2026, the same version was removed the same way without a failure. Signing in, recording, permissions and a Homebrew install were not tested.