Sweepfor Mac
Free Download

Apps & uninstalling

How to Uninstall IntelliJ IDEA From Your Mac (And Other JetBrains IDEs)

Remove IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, WebStorm, and other JetBrains IDEs from your Mac including caches, indexes, and the Toolbox app.

9 min read

JetBrains IDEs are voracious disk users. IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, WebStorm, GoLand, RubyMine, CLion, Rider, and AppCode all share a similar storage architecture — and they all build massive caches and index data. A single project’s index can run 200–500 MB; an IDE that’s seen 30 projects can have 10 GB of caches alone.

The really gnarly part is the path conventions changed between major versions. JetBrains 2019.x and earlier used different paths than 2020+ and the current 2023+/2024 versions. If you’ve been on the same Mac for years, you may have leftover caches from versions you don’t even remember installing.

Here’s the full uninstall on macOS Sonoma 14 and Sequoia 15. The process applies to any JetBrains IDE — just swap the product name in the paths.

Identify what you have

Open Finder → Applications. JetBrains IDEs install with names like:

  • IntelliJ IDEA
  • IntelliJ IDEA CE (Community Edition)
  • PyCharm
  • PyCharm CE
  • WebStorm
  • GoLand
  • RubyMine
  • CLion
  • DataGrip
  • Rider
  • AppCode (discontinued — yes, you might still have it)
  • Android Studio (Google’s fork — covered in a separate guide)

Also check for JetBrains Toolbox — the app JetBrains uses to install and manage all of these. If you have Toolbox, uninstalling individual IDEs through Toolbox cleans up the app bundle but leaves the caches and config behind. We’ll handle both.

Quit all JetBrains IDEs

Cmd+Q in each. In Activity Monitor, search “idea,” “pycharm,” “webstorm,” etc. (or just “JetBrains”) and force-quit anything left.

JetBrains IDEs run a separate process for each open project, so a force-quit on the main app may leave others running.

Drag the IDEs to the Trash

Open Finder → Applications. Drag each JetBrains IDE to the Trash.

If you used Toolbox to install, you can also “Uninstall” from inside Toolbox — but it leaves config and caches. Manual cleanup below applies regardless.

Where JetBrains IDEs store data (current versions, 2020+)

The current path convention uses ~/Library/Application Support/JetBrains/<ProductName><MajorVersion>/. For example:

  • ~/Library/Application Support/JetBrains/IntelliJIdea2024.1/ — config (settings, plugins, keymaps)
  • ~/Library/Caches/JetBrains/IntelliJIdea2024.1/ — caches and indexes (the giant one)
  • ~/Library/Logs/JetBrains/IntelliJIdea2024.1/ — daily logs
  • ~/Library/Preferences/jetbrains.intellijidea-IU.plist — Launch Services preferences

For each major version (2024.1, 2024.2, 2024.3, etc.) there’s a separate folder. Same product, three versions = three sets of caches and configs. This is intentional (lets you have multiple versions installed side by side), but it means uninstalling once isn’t enough.

To find every JetBrains config folder:

ls ~/Library/Application\ Support/JetBrains/
ls ~/Library/Caches/JetBrains/

You’ll see a list like:

IntelliJIdea2023.2
IntelliJIdea2023.3
IntelliJIdea2024.1
PyCharm2024.1
WebStorm2024.2
RubyMine2023.3

Delete every folder for the IDEs you’re uninstalling.

Where older versions stored data

JetBrains 2019.x and earlier used a different convention with hidden folders in your home directory:

  • ~/Library/Caches/IntelliJIdea2019.3/
  • ~/Library/Preferences/IntelliJIdea2019.3/
  • ~/Library/Logs/IntelliJIdea2019.3/
  • ~/Library/Application Support/IntelliJIdea2019.3/
  • ~/.IntelliJIdea2019.3/ (oldest variant, sometimes still around)

If you’ve been on this Mac since before 2020, check for these. They’re easy to miss because they predate the JetBrains/ parent folder convention.

Tip: Run du -sh ~/Library/Caches/JetBrains/* | sort -h to see the size of each cache folder, sorted ascending. The biggest folders are usually the IDEs you've used most recently — and they can each be 1–3 GB. This is the easiest way to confirm the disk space gain before deleting.

The Toolbox app

JetBrains Toolbox is a separate app that manages IDE installations.

  • /Applications/JetBrains Toolbox.app — the Toolbox app itself
  • ~/Library/Application Support/JetBrains/Toolbox/ — Toolbox config, downloaded IDE binaries (often gigabytes)
  • ~/Library/Caches/JetBrains/Toolbox/ — download cache
  • ~/Library/Logs/JetBrains/Toolbox/ — logs
  • ~/Library/Preferences/com.jetbrains.toolbox.plist — Toolbox preferences
  • ~/.local/share/JetBrains/Toolbox/ — alternative location, sometimes used

Toolbox also installs IDE shims that allow command-line launching:

ls ~/Library/Application\ Support/JetBrains/Toolbox/scripts/

These scripts let you run idea or pycharm from Terminal. Remove them when removing Toolbox.

If you’re keeping Toolbox to manage other IDEs, leave it. If you’re nuking everything JetBrains, drag Toolbox to the Trash and clear its support folders.

Skip the manual huntSweep finds every leftover preference, cache, and support file in seconds. Download Sweep free →

Project-specific files (the .idea folders)

This is the part most uninstall guides miss. Every project you’ve ever opened in IntelliJ has a hidden .idea/ folder with project-specific config, run configurations, version control state, and indexes.

These folders aren’t in ~/Library/ — they’re inside each project. To find them:

find ~ -name ".idea" -type d 2>/dev/null

This searches your home folder and lists every .idea/ directory. They’re often included in .gitignore (so they don’t get committed), which means they’re scattered across your projects.

Whether to delete them is a judgment call:

  • Keep: if you might reopen these projects in IntelliJ later, the .idea/ folder remembers your run configurations, code style, and excluded files. Deleting forces you to set them up again.
  • Delete: if you’re truly done with JetBrains, the .idea/ folders are dead weight. They’re project metadata only, not source code.

Source code is never inside .idea/ — your actual project files live alongside it.

Plugins

Plugins are installed inside the per-version Application Support folder, so deleting ~/Library/Application Support/JetBrains/IntelliJIdea2024.1/ removes all plugins for that version. You don’t need separate cleanup.

If you installed JDK or other tools through JetBrains’ embedded SDK feature, those may live at ~/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/ — check there if you want a true clean slate.

Login items

JetBrains IDEs don’t typically add login items. Toolbox does, though.

  1. System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions.
  2. Remove JetBrains Toolbox if listed.

Let Sweep uninstall properlyDrag-to-trash leaves traces. Sweep wipes the app + support files + prefs + caches + helpers all at once. Get Sweep free →

License and account cleanup

JetBrains licenses live in the cloud (jetbrains.com/account) — uninstalling local apps doesn’t affect them. If you have a JetBrains All Products Pack subscription, your license follows your account, and reinstalling on any Mac signs you back in.

If you’re truly done with JetBrains and want to cancel the subscription, that’s an account-level action at jetbrains.com.

URL handlers

JetBrains IDEs register URL schemes like idea:// for deep links from GitHub and other web tools. After uninstall, rebuild Launch Services if needed:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

Empty the Trash and verify

Empty the Trash. Recovered space is often dramatic — 5–15 GB is normal for someone with multiple JetBrains IDEs and years of project caches.

Verify:

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

Both should be empty (or just show whatever IDEs you intentionally kept).

Manual vs. Sweep

JetBrains is genuinely one of the harder Mac uninstalls if you’ve used multiple IDEs over multiple years. The challenges:

  1. Per-IDE, per-version folders accumulate (IntelliJ 2023.2, 2023.3, 2024.1, etc.)
  2. Old version paths predate the JetBrains/ parent folder
  3. Toolbox has its own data plus caches plus IDE binaries
  4. .idea/ folders are scattered across every project on disk

Sweep targets all current and legacy JetBrains paths in one scan. It catches the per-version folders without you having to list them, and pulls Toolbox separately if you want to keep it. The .idea/ folders are still your call (Sweep doesn’t touch project directories).

Reinstalling

If you come back, install through JetBrains Toolbox — it handles versioning and updates cleanly. The fresh install creates new config and cache folders. Settings Sync (if you used it) restores your preferences from the cloud.

That’s JetBrains fully cleaned out. Your ~/Library just got a lot smaller, and your dev tooling is one decision point cleaner.

← Back to all guides