Help · Mac apps

How to uninstall Steam on a Mac.

By Grant and Brad, who make Pangalin's apps · Updated 10 October 2026

Steam keeps its games and data in your Library, not inside the app. So dragging Steam to the Trash, as Valve itself points out, doesn't fully remove it, and your games stay where they were. You choose whether to keep them.

Uninstall Steam

1. Choose Steam › Quit Steam.
2. Drag Steam from Applications to the Trash.
3. In Finder, open the Go menu, hold ⌥ and choose Library. Then open Application Support/Steam.
4. To keep your games: delete everything in that folder except the SteamApps folder, which holds your downloaded games and local saves.
   To remove everything: move the whole Steam folder to the Trash.
5. Empty the Trash. This is permanent. Many games keep saves in Steam Cloud, but not all, so check first if a save matters to you.

To reinstall later, you'll need your Steam account name and password.

Just want the space back?

You don't have to uninstall Steam. To uninstall one game, right-click it in your Steam library and choose Manage › Uninstall. To move games to an external drive, open Steam's settings, go to Storage, add a library folder on the drive with +, then select games and choose Move. Valve's guide on this is written for Windows, so labels may differ slightly on a Mac.

Based on the developer's own instructions, checked October 2026. Menu names can change between versions.