How to Completely Uninstall Skype From Your Mac

Microsoft has been winding Skype down for years. It still works, but if you’re cleaning out apps you no longer use, Skype is a good candidate. The desktop app drops files in ~/Library that survive uninstallation indefinitely — chat history, voicemail recordings, contact caches — and on Macs that have been around for 5+ years, you can find Skype data dating back to before the rebrand to “Skype for Business” and back again.

Here’s how to fully remove Skype on macOS Sonoma 14 and Sequoia 15, including the older “Skype for Business” pieces if you ever installed that variant.

Quit Skype

Skype keeps running in the background after you close the window. Quit it properly:

1. Click “Skype” in the menu bar → Quit Skype, or hit Cmd+Q.
2. Open Activity Monitor.
3. Search “Skype.” Force-quit anything still running.

You may see “Skype Helper” processes — those are the Electron renderer processes. They should disappear when the main app quits.

Drag Skype to the Trash

Open Finder → Applications. Drag Skype to the Trash. The app bundle is around 200 MB.

If you also have “Skype for Business” (the older app, deprecated in 2018), it’s a separate bundle — drag that to the Trash too. Its bundle ID is com.microsoft.SkypeForBusiness.

Where Skype stores its data

Skype’s modern bundle ID is com.skype.skype. Here’s everywhere it leaves data:

• ~/Library/Application Support/Skype/ — older Skype data folder; sometimes still present
• ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Skype for Desktop/ — the main data folder for current Skype
• ~/Library/Caches/com.skype.skype/ — image and avatar cache
• ~/Library/Caches/com.skype.skype.ShipIt/ — Squirrel updater
• ~/Library/Preferences/com.skype.skype.plist — preferences
• ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.skype.skype.savedState/ — window state
• ~/Library/Cookies/com.skype.skype.binarycookies — cookies
• ~/Library/HTTPStorages/com.skype.skype/ — modern web storage
• ~/Library/Logs/Skype Helper (Renderer)/ — diagnostic logs

For Skype for Business (if you had it):

• ~/Library/Application Support/com.microsoft.SkypeForBusiness/ — main data
• ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.SkypeForBusiness/ — sandbox container
• ~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.SkypeForBusiness.plist — preferences

Open Finder, hit Shift+Cmd+G, paste each path, and clear what’s there.

Login items and background

Skype adds itself as a startup item by default.

1. System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions.
2. Find Skype under “Open at Login” — click minus.
3. Check “Allow in the Background” too — Skype uses this to receive calls while the app is closed.

After uninstall, both entries should clear themselves on next login if they don’t disappear immediately.

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Keychain entries

Skype stores account credentials, OAuth tokens, and call history encryption keys in the Keychain.

1. Open Keychain Access.
2. Search “Skype.”
3. Delete all matching entries.

You’ll typically see “Skype” application password, “Skype Safe Storage” (the Electron encryption key), and a handful of cookie entries.

Notifications and privacy

Skype registers as a notification source and asks for camera/microphone access on first call.

1. System Settings → Notifications. If Skype is listed, you can leave it (it’s harmless once the app is gone) or remove the entry by deleting the plist and rebooting.
2. System Settings → Privacy & Security → Camera. Remove Skype if listed.
3. Same for Microphone, Files and Folders, and Contacts.

The privacy entries are tiny but worth cleaning if you like a tidy panel.

Address book integration

If you ever clicked “Yes” when Skype asked to access your Contacts, it cached a copy of your address book in ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Skype for Desktop/IndexedDB/. Removing that folder (which we did above) clears the cache. Skype doesn’t actually modify your Contacts app data, just reads it.

To double-check, open the Contacts app and look at any contact card. There should be no “Skype” field unless you manually added one.

Empty the Trash

Empty the Trash. Skype’s data is usually 200 MB to 1 GB depending on how long you’ve used it and how many call recordings or sent files are cached.

If you get “files in use” errors, double-check Activity Monitor for stragglers.

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Skype credit and subscription

This is a separate concern — uninstalling the app doesn’t cancel a paid Skype subscription or refund your Skype credit. To handle the account side:

1. Go to skype.com and sign in.
2. Account → Manage Subscriptions to cancel.
3. To delete your Microsoft account entirely (which removes Skype access for that account), use account.microsoft.com → Your info → Close your account.

Worth noting: Microsoft has also been migrating Skype users to Teams over the past two years. If you got a “your Skype account will move to Teams” email and acted on it, your data might also exist in Teams now.

Sweep vs. doing it manually

Skype is a moderate-difficulty manual uninstall. The data is mostly under one folder (Microsoft/Skype for Desktop/), but the Skype for Business legacy paths and the Squirrel updater pieces are easy to miss. Sweep’s app uninstaller targets all bundle IDs (current and legacy), so a single click clears both Skype and any Skype for Business remnants you forgot you had.

In practice, if you’ve been on the same Mac for 4+ years, you almost certainly have at least one Microsoft chat app’s leftovers hanging around — Lync, Skype for Business, Skype, Teams classic, new Teams. Sweep can clean any combination in one run.

Reinstalling

If you ever need Skype back, install only from skype.com — the Mac App Store version is generally an older build. The fresh install creates clean folders and preferences. Your account, contacts, and chat history (if you kept the same Microsoft account) sync down on first login. Local data isn’t preserved between uninstalls without manual export.

That’s it. Skype gone, leftovers cleared, login item removed. Microsoft’s chat history on this Mac is now just whatever Teams has.