How to Completely Uninstall Android Studio From Your Mac

Android Studio is the heaviest IDE on most developer Macs. The app bundle itself is around 1.5 GB, but that’s a small fraction of what gets installed alongside it. The Android SDK alone is typically 8–20 GB. The Gradle cache hits 5+ GB on a typical Android dev machine. AVD emulators (Android Virtual Devices) are 6–8 GB each. Add the JetBrains-style per-version config folders, and you’re looking at 20–50 GB of total footprint.

Here’s how to remove Android Studio completely on macOS Sonoma 14 and Sequoia 15. This is one of the more rewarding uninstalls if you’re done with Android dev — disk space gains are dramatic.

Decide what to remove

Android Studio is built on IntelliJ IDEA and shares its config layout, but adds:

1. The Android SDK (a totally separate concern)
2. AVD emulators
3. Gradle cache
4. The Android NDK (if you’ve used native development)
5. Various Android command-line tools

You can remove the IDE but keep the SDK if you want to use a different Android editor (VS Code with Android extensions, Flutter from a different IDE, etc.). For a complete cleanup, remove everything.

Quit Android Studio and stop emulators

Cmd+Q in Android Studio. Then close any AVD emulator windows.

In Activity Monitor, search “studio,” “emulator,” “qemu,” “adb,” “gradle” — force-quit anything still running.

# Stop ADB:
adb kill-server

# Or if adb isn't in PATH:
~/Library/Android/sdk/platform-tools/adb kill-server

This shuts down the Android Debug Bridge daemon, which can keep file handles open on SDK files.

Drag Android Studio to the Trash

Open Finder → Applications. Drag “Android Studio” to the Trash. The app bundle is around 1.5 GB.

Where Android Studio config lives

Android Studio’s config follows the JetBrains pattern with per-version folders:

• ~/Library/Application Support/Google/AndroidStudio2024.1/ — config, plugins, keymaps (one folder per major version)
• ~/Library/Caches/Google/AndroidStudio2024.1/ — caches and indexes
• ~/Library/Logs/Google/AndroidStudio2024.1/ — daily logs
• ~/Library/Preferences/com.google.android.studio.plist — preferences
• ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.google.android.studio.savedState/ — window state

Older versions used different paths:

• ~/Library/Application Support/AndroidStudio*/ (versions before mid-2020)
• ~/.AndroidStudio*/ (the original convention from 2014–2019)

To list every Android Studio config folder:

ls ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/ 2>/dev/null
ls ~/Library/Caches/Google/ 2>/dev/null

Drag everything Android Studio related to the Trash.

The Android SDK (the giant one)

The SDK is separate from Android Studio. It lives at:

• ~/Library/Android/sdk/ — main SDK location (default)
• ~/Library/Android/sdk-tools/ — alternative SDK tools location
• ~/Android/Sdk/ — sometimes used on older installs

Inside ~/Library/Android/sdk/ you’ll typically find:

• platforms/ — Android API level platforms (one per version: android-30, android-33, android-34, etc.)
• build-tools/ — build tool versions
• system-images/ — emulator system images (often the largest subfolder, 5+ GB each)
• ndk/ — Native Development Kit (if installed)
• cmdline-tools/ — command-line tools
• platform-tools/ — adb, fastboot, etc.
• extras/ — Google Play services, support libraries, etc.

Total SDK size is usually 10–25 GB. Drag ~/Library/Android/ entirely to the Trash if you’re done.

If you have a custom SDK location (configured during Android Studio setup), check Android Studio’s settings or your local.properties files in old projects to find it. Run:

echo $ANDROID_HOME
echo $ANDROID_SDK_ROOT

These environment variables, if set, point at your SDK location.

AVD emulators

The AVD definitions and disk images live separately:

• ~/.android/avd/ — AVD config files and disk images for each emulator
• ~/.android/cache/ — emulator cache
• ~/.android/ — general Android tooling state

Each AVD has its own subdirectory under avd/ with files like userdata.img, system.img, and config. These can be 4–10 GB per AVD.

Drag ~/.android/ to the Trash.

Gradle cache

Android projects build with Gradle, and Gradle aggressively caches downloaded dependencies, build outputs, and the wrapper itself.

• ~/.gradle/ — Gradle config, caches, wrapper distributions
  • caches/ — downloaded dependencies, build cache (usually 3–10 GB)
  • wrapper/dists/ — Gradle wrapper distributions
  • daemon/ — daemon logs

Drag ~/.gradle/ to the Trash. If you also use Gradle for non-Android Java projects, be aware this clears the cache for those too — but the cache is just a cache, dependencies will redownload as needed.

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Project-level files

Each Android project has these dev-time folders:

• <project>/build/ — build output
• <project>/.gradle/ — per-project Gradle cache
• <project>/.idea/ — JetBrains-style project config

These are inside your project folders, not in ~/Library/. You generally want to keep them while the project is active, but if you’re nuking Android dev entirely, they’re disposable. Source code stays — only build artifacts and IDE config are inside these.

To find every Android project’s .gradle/ cache:

find ~ -name ".gradle" -type d -not -path "*/.gradle/*" 2>/dev/null

Java / JDK

Android Studio bundles its own JDK at Android Studio.app/Contents/jbr/. When you delete the app, the bundled JDK goes with it.

If you also installed system JDKs for Android development:

• ~/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/ — user-level JDK installs
• /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/ — system-level JDK installs

These might be used by other Java tools, so don’t blindly delete. Check /usr/libexec/java_home -V to see all installed JDKs.

Command-line tools and PATH

Android Studio’s setup might have added paths to your shell profile. Check:

grep -i "android" ~/.zshrc ~/.bash_profile ~/.bashrc 2>/dev/null

Common entries:

export ANDROID_HOME=$HOME/Library/Android/sdk
export PATH=$PATH:$ANDROID_HOME/emulator
export PATH=$PATH:$ANDROID_HOME/tools
export PATH=$PATH:$ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools

Remove these lines from your shell profile if you’re done with Android dev.

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Login items

Android Studio doesn’t typically add login items, but the Android Emulator might be configured to start at login.

1. System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions.
2. Remove Android Studio or Emulator entries if listed.

Keychain

Google sign-in tokens (for Firebase, Google Play services, etc.) may live in the Keychain. Search “Google” and “Android” in Keychain Access — review carefully. Some Google entries are used by Chrome, Drive, etc., so don’t delete those if you use them.

Empty the Trash

Empty the Trash. The space recovered is usually 20–50 GB on a heavily-used Android dev machine. This is one of the most space-recovering uninstalls on a Mac.

If macOS warns about files in use, check Activity Monitor for stragglers. The emulator process (qemu-system-aarch64 on Apple Silicon) sometimes survives a quit.

Manual vs. Sweep

Android Studio is among the harder Mac uninstalls because:

1. The IDE itself is a JetBrains app with the typical multi-version cache layout
2. The Android SDK is a separate concern at ~/Library/Android/
3. AVDs and cache live at ~/.android/
4. Gradle’s massive cache lives at ~/.gradle/
5. Per-project build folders aren’t in ~/Library/

Sweep handles the IDE side (per-version Application Support, Caches, Logs). The SDK, .android/, and .gradle/ are explicit Sweep options because they’re ambiguous — some users keep them for use with other Android tooling. You see what’s there, decide what to remove, and confirm before anything is deleted.

For a true full uninstall, you’ll want all four removed. Sweep gives you that with one click after the scan.

Reinstalling

If you come back to Android dev, download Android Studio fresh from developer.android.com/studio. The setup wizard reinstalls the SDK (you can choose components), creates a new emulator if you want, and downloads Gradle on first build. None of the old caches are useful — the new install is faster long-term.

That’s Android Studio, the SDK, AVDs, and the Gradle cache fully removed. Your Mac just got a serious chunk of disk space back, and the Android development footprint is gone.