How to Completely Uninstall Photoshop From Your Mac (And Adobe's Hidden Files)

A friend asked me why his 512GB MacBook Pro was nearly full after he’d “uninstalled everything.” He’d dragged Photoshop to the trash six months ago. When I poked around, Photoshop was still taking up 11GB across his system — caches, presets, Camera Raw temp files, and a Creative Cloud helper that was still running in the background.

Adobe apps are some of the worst offenders on macOS. Photoshop alone scatters files into at least eight different folders, registers a privileged helper tool, installs a system-wide daemon, and leaves behind preference files even if you reinstall. Here’s how to wipe it cleanly.

Why dragging Photoshop to the Trash isn’t enough

The Photoshop app bundle in /Applications/Adobe Photoshop 2024/ is roughly 4-5GB. That’s only the executable. The rest of Photoshop’s footprint lives elsewhere:

• Caches and scratch files in ~/Library/Caches/Adobe/ and ~/Library/Caches/com.adobe.Photoshop/
• Application support data including presets, brushes, actions, and plugin metadata in ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/
• Preferences in ~/Library/Preferences/com.adobe.Photoshop.plist and around 15-20 related plist files
• Privileged helper tool at /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/com.adobe.acc.installer.v2
• System-wide application support in /Library/Application Support/Adobe/
• LaunchAgents for Creative Cloud that auto-start at login
• Camera Raw cache which can balloon to several gigabytes for heavy photo editors

I’ve seen Camera Raw caches alone hit 20GB on photographers’ machines. They never knew it was there.

Step 1: Quit Photoshop and every Adobe process

Before you remove anything, kill every running Adobe process. Photoshop’s Creative Cloud helper holds file locks that’ll cause errors during deletion.

1. Open Activity Monitor (Applications → Utilities)
2. In the search bar, type “Adobe”
3. Quit each process: Adobe Desktop Service, Core Sync, AdobeIPCBroker, AGSService, CCXProcess, CCLibrary, Adobe Crash Reporter
4. Type “Creative Cloud” and quit those too
5. Type “Photoshop” — make sure nothing’s lingering

If a process refuses to quit, select it and use Force Quit. The privileged helper (com.adobe.acc.installer.v2) often re-spawns; we’ll handle that below.

Step 2: Use the official Adobe uninstaller first

Adobe ships a per-app uninstaller. It’s not great — it misses caches, preferences, and system-wide files — but it’s the cleanest starting point because it deregisters license entitlements and removes some hooks the Finder can’t see.

1. Open Creative Cloud Desktop
2. Find Photoshop in your installed apps list
3. Click the three dots next to it and pick Uninstall
4. When it asks “Remove Preferences?” — say Yes
5. Wait for it to finish (it’ll report success even if files are left behind)

If Creative Cloud is broken or won’t open, Adobe also ships a standalone tool called the Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool. Download it from helpx.adobe.com — it’s a notarized utility from Adobe directly. Run it, pick “All” or just Photoshop, and let it strip the registered components.

Free up tens of gigabytesAdobe and Microsoft apps leave 5–20GB scattered around. Sweep finds it all. Try Sweep free →

Step 3: Hunt down the leftover files manually

Even after the official uninstaller runs, Photoshop’s leftover footprint is significant. Open Finder, hit Cmd+Shift+G, and visit each of these folders. Delete anything Photoshop-related.

User-level folders to clean

• ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Photoshop 2024/ — presets, brushes, plugins, custom actions
• ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop 2024 Settings/
• ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/ — Camera Raw caches and presets
• ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Color/ — color profiles synced across Adobe apps
• ~/Library/Caches/Adobe/
• ~/Library/Caches/com.adobe.Photoshop/
• ~/Library/Caches/com.adobe.AdobePhotoshop2024/
• ~/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop 2024 Settings/
• ~/Library/Preferences/com.adobe.Photoshop.plist
• ~/Library/Logs/Adobe/
• ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.adobe.Photoshop.savedState/
• ~/Documents/Adobe/ — sometimes used for auto-saves and recovery files

System-level folders (require admin password)

• /Library/Application Support/Adobe/ — most of Adobe’s shared codebase lives here
• /Library/Caches/com.adobe.acc.installer.v2/
• /Library/Preferences/com.adobe.* plist files
• /Library/LaunchAgents/com.adobe.AdobeCreativeCloud.plist
• /Library/LaunchAgents/com.adobe.GC.AGM.plist
• /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.adobe.acc.installer.v2.plist
• /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.adobe.agsservice.plist
• /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/com.adobe.acc.installer.v2

You’ll need to authenticate when deleting things from /Library/. macOS will prompt you.

Step 4: Unload the launch agents

Even after deleting the plist files, the agents may still be loaded in memory until you log out. Force-unload them with Terminal:

launchctl unload /Library/LaunchAgents/com.adobe.AdobeCreativeCloud.plist
launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.adobe.acc.installer.v2.plist

If those files are already deleted, the command will error harmlessly. The agents will be gone after your next login.

Step 5: Remove the Camera Raw cache (the secret 20GB hog)

If you’ve ever opened a RAW file in Photoshop, Adobe Camera Raw built a cache. By default it caps at 1GB, but I’ve seen photographers raise it to 50GB and forget. Check:

1. Go to ~/Library/Caches/Adobe Camera Raw/
2. If the folder exists and the app is uninstalled, delete the whole thing

This single folder is often the biggest reclaimed space when uninstalling Photoshop.

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

Step 6: Empty the Trash and restart

Some leftover Adobe files are open by macOS until you reboot. Empty the Trash, restart your Mac, then check Activity Monitor again — no Adobe processes should appear.

What about Creative Cloud itself?

Creative Cloud Desktop is a separate app and uninstalling Photoshop doesn’t remove it. If you have other Adobe apps you want to keep (say, Lightroom), leave Creative Cloud installed.

If you want to nuke everything Adobe:

1. Open Creative Cloud and uninstall every Adobe app first
2. Run the Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool with the “All” option
3. Manually delete /Library/Application Support/Adobe/ and ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/
4. Remove the privileged helper at /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/com.adobe.acc.installer.v2

Adobe’s Cleaner Tool is decent, but it still misses user caches and preference files. The manual cleanup in step 3 is essential.

The case for letting Sweep handle it

The manual route works. I do it myself when I want forensic-level control over what’s removed. But for most people, it’s tedious and error-prone — Adobe scatters bundle IDs across multiple variants (com.adobe.Photoshop, com.adobe.Photoshop2024, com.adobe.AdobePhotoshop2024) and missing one means files linger.

Sweep’s app uninstaller scans for every Adobe-prefixed file across ~/Library, /Library, LaunchAgents, LaunchDaemons, and PrivilegedHelperTools. It shows you everything before deleting — bundle IDs, file sizes, modification dates. You confirm, it removes them. The whole thing takes about 30 seconds versus 20 minutes by hand.

It also catches the orphaned files: things left behind from Photoshop CS6 that you forgot existed, or the Creative Cloud helper from a 2019 install that’s still launching at login.

Common questions

Will this affect my Lightroom catalog or Illustrator files? No. Your files (PSDs, AIs, catalogs) live in your Documents or Pictures folders by default. The cleanup above only touches Photoshop’s app data.

What if I want to reinstall Photoshop later? Reinstalling is clean. Adobe rebuilds caches and preferences on first launch. You’ll need to re-add custom brushes and actions from backup if you had them.

Does this remove my license? The official Adobe uninstaller deregisters your license. If you skip that step and just delete files, you may need to log out and back into Creative Cloud on your next install to restore the seat.

A clean uninstall reclaims 8-15GB on most machines. On Macs with active Camera Raw use, I’ve seen 30GB+. Worth the effort either way.