How to Properly Uninstall Discord From Your Mac

Discord is one of the more aggressive cache-builders on macOS. It downloads every emoji, every server icon, every avatar, and every voice clip you’ve ever heard, then keeps them around in case you scroll back. On a Mac that’s been running Discord for two years, you can easily find 4–6 GB of cached media in ~/Library/Application Support/discord/Cache. Mine had 5.8 GB last time I checked.

That cache survives a drag-to-trash uninstall. So does the auto-updater, the login item registration, and a stack of preference files. Here’s the full removal process for Discord on macOS Sonoma 14 and Sequoia 15.

Quit every Discord instance first

Discord runs multiple processes — the main app, a helper for each window, and a separate helper for voice. Quitting from the menu only kills the visible window in some cases.

1. Click Discord in the menu bar (top of screen) and choose Quit, or hit Cmd+Q.
2. Open Activity Monitor.
3. Search “Discord” — you should see all processes disappear within a few seconds.
4. If anything’s left, select it and click the X to force-quit.

If you have Discord Canary or Discord PTB installed (the beta channels), they’re separate apps with separate bundle IDs. You’ll need to uninstall each one separately.

Drag Discord to the Trash

Open Finder → Applications, find Discord, and drag it to the Trash. The app bundle is around 280 MB. The leftovers are larger.

This is also a good moment to check whether you have Canary or PTB installed alongside the stable build — they all live in Applications and look almost identical. Their bundle IDs differ:

• Stable: com.hnc.Discord
• Canary: com.hnc.DiscordCanary
• PTB: com.hnc.DiscordPTB

Where Discord stores its data

Discord’s a Chromium app, so it follows Electron conventions for storage. Almost everything is under ~/Library/Application Support/discord/. Here’s the full list:

• ~/Library/Application Support/discord/ — main data folder. Includes:
  • Cache/ — voice, video, image cache (the big one)
  • Code Cache/ — JavaScript bytecode cache
  • GPUCache/ — graphics cache
  • IndexedDB/ — message and user data
  • Local Storage/ — auth tokens, settings
  • Session Storage/ — current session state
  • Shared Dictionary/ — spell check
• ~/Library/Caches/com.hnc.Discord/ — auto-updater download cache
• ~/Library/Caches/com.hnc.Discord.ShipIt/ — Squirrel updater
• ~/Library/Preferences/com.hnc.Discord.plist — app preferences
• ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.hnc.Discord.savedState/ — window state
• ~/Library/Cookies/com.hnc.Discord.binarycookies — cookies
• ~/Library/HTTPStorages/com.hnc.Discord/ — modern web storage
• ~/Library/Logs/Discord/ — crash and diagnostic logs

If you’re using Canary or PTB, swap Discord for discordcanary or discordptb in the Application Support path, and use the matching bundle ID for the rest.

Remove the login item

Discord adds itself to login items so it starts when you boot. Even after uninstalling, the entry can linger.

1. Open System Settings.
2. General → Login Items & Extensions.
3. Look for Discord under “Open at Login” and click minus.
4. Check “Allow in the Background” too — Discord uses this on newer macOS versions.

If you don’t see Discord listed, it’s already clean.

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Clear the keychain entries

Discord stores its safe storage encryption key in the Keychain. Removing it isn’t critical (the data it protects is gone with the app), but tidying it up keeps your keychain clean.

1. Open Keychain Access.
2. Search “Discord.”
3. Delete entries named “Discord Safe Storage” and any cookie entries.

If you reinstall later, Discord will create fresh keychain entries.

Notification Center cleanup

Like most apps, Discord registers as a notification source. The entry survives uninstall and shows in System Settings → Notifications until you reboot. If it bothers you, deleting ~/Library/Preferences/com.hnc.Discord.plist and rebooting clears the registration.

This isn’t dangerous to leave alone — macOS just lists it as an app that “may send notifications.” It can’t actually send any if Discord isn’t installed.

Empty the Trash

Once you’ve moved everything from ~/Library into the Trash, empty it. The space recovered varies wildly based on how heavily you use Discord. A casual user might recover 500 MB. A daily user with multiple servers can easily clear 5 GB or more.

If macOS complains that files are “in use,” check Activity Monitor again — a Discord helper sometimes survives the main app’s quit and holds a file lock. Force-quit it and try emptying again.

What about Discord in a browser?

If you switched from the desktop app to using Discord in Safari or Chrome, the desktop app’s leftovers are still on your disk. Removing them doesn’t affect the browser version at all. Your messages, server list, and DMs all live on Discord’s servers.

If you also want to clean up Discord’s data inside your browser:

• Safari: Settings → Privacy → Manage Website Data → search “discord” → Remove.
• Chrome: chrome://settings/content/all → search “discord” → trash icon.

Manual vs. Sweep

The manual route is fine, especially if you’re comfortable with ~/Library. The annoying part is that Discord drops 11 separate folders/files across 7 different Library subfolders. Miss one and you’ve still got hundreds of megabytes hanging around.

Sweep handles all of this with a single click. It searches for everything matching com.hnc.Discord (and the Canary/PTB bundle IDs if those are present), shows a complete list of what it found, and gives you a size total before you confirm. Discord is one of the apps where Sweep most reliably finds 4–5 GB to recover, because that media cache is huge and easy to forget about.

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

Reinstalling for a fresh start

If you’re uninstalling because Discord’s been crashing or the cache has become corrupted, doing a full clean uninstall and reinstalling from discord.com is the fix that actually works. The “Repair installation” options some apps offer don’t exist for Discord — full reinstall is the path.

Your account, friends list, server memberships, and DMs all sync down on first login. Your settings (notification preferences, audio devices, hotkeys) will reset, but those are fast to redo.

That’s the whole removal. Discord’s gone, the cache is recovered, and your ~/Library has a few gigabytes back.