How to Uninstall Affinity Photo From Your Mac

Affinity Photo’s container can grow surprisingly fast. Every document you open builds a snapshot history Photo uses for the History panel and undo stack. On a heavy retoucher’s Mac, I’ve seen the Photo container hit 18GB even though they only had a handful of documents on disk. The snapshots stick around long after the source files are gone.

Removing Affinity Photo properly means removing the container, the group container assets (if no other Affinity apps), and a couple of stragglers outside the sandbox.

Affinity Photo’s footprint

Bundle ID:

• Mac App Store: com.seriflabs.affinityphoto2
• Direct download: com.seriflabs.affinityphoto2-direct

Files installed:

• App at /Applications/Affinity Photo 2.app/
• Container at ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto2/
• Group container (shared with Designer/Publisher) at ~/Library/Group Containers/<team-id>.com.seriflabs.affinity/
• Caches at ~/Library/Caches/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto2/
• Saved state at ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto2.savedState/

Affinity Photo is sandboxed, which means most of its files are inside the container. Deleting the container removes most of the footprint in one move.

Step 1: Quit Affinity Photo and other Affinity apps

In Activity Monitor, search “Affinity”:

1. Affinity Photo
2. Affinity Designer (if running — you may want it quit before touching shared resources)
3. Affinity Publisher (same)

Quit each. Affinity doesn’t run background helpers, so once these are gone, nothing’s lingering.

Step 2: Drag Affinity Photo to the Trash

Move /Applications/Affinity Photo 2.app/ to the Trash.

If you got it from the Mac App Store, you can also delete it from Launchpad — right-click the icon and pick Delete App. Same effect.

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Step 3: Delete the container

This is the big space-saver. Open Finder, hit Cmd+Shift+G, and visit:

• ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto2/

Delete the entire folder. Inside this container is:

• Document history snapshots (often the bulk — sometimes 10GB+)
• Macros and saved adjustments
• Custom brush settings
• Sandboxed clipboard cache
• Preferences and workspace layouts
• Persona-specific data (Develop, Liquify, Tone Mapping, Export)

If you have the direct download version:

• ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto2-direct/

Step 4: Group container — only if no other Affinity apps

If Affinity Photo is the only Affinity app you have, delete:

• ~/Library/Group Containers/<team-id>.com.seriflabs.affinity/

The team ID is a unique string — the folder looks like 9HNRC4K9SU.com.seriflabs.affinity. Inside are shared brushes, color palettes, and stock content shared across all Affinity apps.

If you have Designer or Publisher installed, skip this step. Deleting the group container resets their shared resources too.

Step 5: Stragglers outside the sandbox

A few files end up outside the container:

• ~/Library/Caches/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto2/
• ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto2.savedState/
• ~/Library/Preferences/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto2.plist (sometimes present)
• ~/Library/Logs/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto2/

Sandboxed apps usually keep all of this inside the container, but Affinity has a few outliers.

Step 6: Stock content packs

If you bought stock content (brush packs, texture libraries, macro bundles), they live inside the group container at:

• ~/Library/Group Containers/<team-id>.com.seriflabs.affinity/Library/Content/

A full Affinity content library can be 5-10GB. If you’re keeping the group container (because of Designer or Publisher), the content stays. If you’re nuking the group container in step 4, the content packs go with it.

Step 7: Empty the Trash

No reboot needed. Affinity doesn’t install daemons or launch agents. Once the Trash is empty, Affinity Photo is gone.

Don’t dig through ~/Library yourselfSweep hunts every leftover an uninstaller misses. Free download for Mac →

Realistic space recovery

Affinity Photo uninstall reclaims:

1. 1-1.5GB from the app bundle
2. 1-18GB from container (depends entirely on history depth)
3. 50-200MB from caches and state
4. 0-10GB from group container if removed

Total: usually 2-30GB. Heavy retouchers with deep history and stock content can see 30GB+ recovered.

What about my .afphoto files?

Your Affinity Photo documents (.afphoto) live wherever you saved them. Uninstalling doesn’t touch them. They become unopenable without Affinity Photo (or a compatible app), but the files persist.

Convert important files to TIFF, PSD, or PNG before removing Affinity Photo permanently if you’re switching tools.

Snapshots — why the container gets so big

Affinity Photo’s History panel persists between sessions. Every step you take in a document creates a snapshot stored alongside the file inside the container. Snapshots aren’t deleted when you close the document — they stick around in case you reopen it.

After a year of regular use, the container can have snapshots from hundreds of files, including documents you’ve long since moved or deleted. There’s no built-in way to clear snapshots without nuking the container.

This is the main reason removing Affinity Photo’s container reclaims so much space.

Mac App Store vs direct — clean up both bundle IDs

If you’ve moved between the Mac App Store and direct download versions, you may have files from both. Check:

• ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto2/
• ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto2-direct/

Delete whichever variant matches your old install.

Common questions

Will I lose my Affinity license? No. Licenses are tied to your Affinity account or Mac App Store account. Sign in on a fresh install and you’re back.

Will this affect Designer or Publisher? Only if you delete the group container. The Photo container is independent. Skip step 4 if you have other Affinity apps installed.

Can I uninstall just Photo and keep Designer? Yes. Just don’t touch the group container. The container deletion in step 3 only affects Photo.

What about RAW develop history? The Develop persona’s history is stored inside the main container. Deleting the container removes all RAW develop adjustments you’d applied. The original RAW files are untouched, but if you saved your work as .afphoto and rely on the live RAW pipeline, you’ll lose those adjustments.

Manual versus automated

Affinity Photo is straightforward to uninstall manually. The container approach makes cleanup mostly a single-folder operation. The only complexity is the group container decision (delete or keep based on other Affinity apps).

Sweep’s app uninstaller automates this — it detects which Affinity apps you have, flags the group container as shared, and lets you choose whether to remove it. For a one-off uninstall, manual works in five minutes. For a full Affinity purge with multiple versions installed, automation saves time.

Resetting Affinity Photo without uninstalling

If you’re fixing a broken Photo install rather than removing it:

1. Quit Affinity Photo
2. Delete only ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto2/Data/Library/Preferences/
3. Relaunch — preferences rebuild from defaults

For a deeper reset that clears history but keeps preferences:

1. Quit Photo
2. Delete ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto2/Data/Documents/Snapshots/
3. Relaunch

This reclaims the largest chunk of the container without a full uninstall.