How to Completely Uninstall Slack From Your Mac

If you’ve used Slack on a Mac for a year or two, dragging it to the Trash leaves behind a surprising amount of data — workspace caches, message databases, OAuth tokens, and a Squirrel auto-updater that quietly checks for new versions even after the app is gone. On a recent cleanup of my own Mac, Slack’s leftovers added up to 2.4 GB across five workspaces I hadn’t logged into in months.

Slack also installs a login item, registers itself as a notification source, and writes a com.tinyspeck.slackmacgap preference file that lingers forever. Here’s how to remove all of it on macOS Sonoma 14 and Sequoia 15, and where Sweep saves you the trip through ~/Library.

Quit Slack first

Before deleting anything, fully quit Slack. The menu bar icon is misleading — closing the window leaves Slack running in the background. Right-click the Dock icon and choose Quit, or hit Cmd+Q with Slack focused.

If Slack refuses to quit (it sometimes hangs on a stuck workspace), open Activity Monitor, search for “Slack”, select every process (the main app plus several “Slack Helper” entries), and click the X to force-quit. Slack uses a Chromium-style multi-process model, so seeing 6–8 helper processes is normal.

Move the app to the Trash

Open Finder, go to your Applications folder, and drag Slack to the Trash. Or right-click the Dock icon, choose Options, and select “Remove from Dock” first to clean up your Dock shortcut.

This removes the 250 MB app bundle but leaves every preference, cache, and database file intact. That’s the part most people miss.

Where Slack hides its files

Slack’s bundle ID is com.tinyspeck.slackmacgap, and that string appears in nearly every leftover folder. Here’s the full list of paths to check on macOS Sonoma 14+:

• ~/Library/Application Support/Slack/ — the big one. Contains your message cache, workspace icons, IndexedDB databases, and the auto-updater. Often 1–3 GB.
• ~/Library/Caches/com.tinyspeck.slackmacgap/ — image and emoji caches. Usually 100–500 MB.
• ~/Library/Caches/com.tinyspeck.slackmacgap.ShipIt/ — the Squirrel update helper’s cache.
• ~/Library/Preferences/com.tinyspeck.slackmacgap.plist — your app preferences (window size, sidebar settings, default workspace).
• ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.tinyspeck.slackmacgap.savedState/ — window restoration data.
• ~/Library/Cookies/com.tinyspeck.slackmacgap.binarycookies — login cookies for slack.com.
• ~/Library/HTTPStorages/com.tinyspeck.slackmacgap/ — modern WebKit storage.
• ~/Library/HTTPStorages/com.tinyspeck.slackmacgap.binarycookies — legacy cookie storage.
• ~/Library/Logs/Slack/ — diagnostic logs.
• ~/Library/Application Scripts/com.tinyspeck.slackmacgap/ — sandbox scripts directory (often empty but worth checking).
• ~/Library/Containers/com.tinyspeck.slackmacgap/ — only present if you installed Slack from the Mac App Store; the direct download from slack.com isn’t sandboxed.

To find these by hand: open Finder, hit Shift+Cmd+G, paste each path, and delete what you find. It’s tedious but works.

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Remove Slack’s login item

Slack adds itself as a login item by default, which is why it pops up every time you boot. Even after you delete the app, the login item entry can linger and produce a “Slack quit unexpectedly” dialog at startup.

To remove it on Sonoma 14 or Sequoia 15:

1. Open System Settings.
2. Click General in the sidebar, then Login Items & Extensions.
3. Look for Slack under “Open at Login” and click the minus button to remove it.
4. Scroll down to “Allow in the Background” — if Slack is listed there, toggle it off too.

If Slack isn’t in either list, you’re already clean. The new System Settings layout in Sonoma actually makes this easier than the old “Users & Groups → Login Items” path.

Clear Slack from Notification Center

Slack registers as a notification source, and that registration sticks around even after the app is gone. To clear it:

1. System Settings → Notifications.
2. Scroll to find Slack in the application list.
3. If it’s there, you can either leave it (it’s harmless) or remove the registration by deleting ~/Library/Preferences/com.tinyspeck.slackmacgap.plist and rebooting.

The plist is what tells macOS that Slack exists as a notification-capable app. Once it’s gone and you’ve rebooted, the entry disappears from System Settings.

Sign out of the keychain entries

Slack stores OAuth tokens in the macOS Keychain under entries like “Slack Safe Storage” and per-workspace cookie entries. These don’t take up meaningful disk space, but they are credentials.

To remove them:

1. Open Keychain Access (it’s hidden — search Spotlight or look in Applications → Utilities).
2. In the search bar, type “slack”.
3. Select every result and hit Delete.
4. Repeat the search in the “iCloud” keychain (top-left dropdown) if you use Keychain sync.

If you reinstall Slack later, it’ll create fresh entries on next login. No harm done.

What about the App Store version?

If you installed Slack from the Mac App Store instead of slack.com, the layout is slightly different. Most of Slack’s data lives inside ~/Library/Containers/com.tinyspeck.slackmacgap/ because App Store apps are sandboxed. Drag the app to the Trash and delete the Containers folder — most other paths above won’t exist for the sandboxed build.

You can tell which version you have by right-clicking Slack in Applications and choosing “Show Package Contents.” If you see _MASReceipt inside Contents/, it’s the App Store version.

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Empty the Trash

Once you’ve cleared every folder above, empty the Trash. Slack’s caches in particular take up real space — emptying recovered 1.8 GB on my MacBook Air during a recent cleanup.

If macOS warns that some files are “in use,” it usually means a Slack helper process is still running. Open Activity Monitor, search “slack,” kill anything that comes up, and try emptying again.

A faster way

Honestly, walking through ~/Library by hand is fine if you only do it once a year. But if you’ve ever uninstalled an app and a month later wondered why your Mac feels sluggish, the answer is usually a stack of leftovers from apps you forgot you had.

Sweep’s app uninstaller scans every Library subfolder for files matching the app’s bundle ID (com.tinyspeck.slackmacgap and its variants), shows you exactly what’s about to be deleted, and removes everything in one click. It also catches the helper apps and update caches that even careful manual cleanup can miss — Slack’s ShipIt updater being a good example.

You stay in control: nothing gets deleted without your confirmation, and the preview tells you exactly how much space you’re getting back. For Slack alone the answer is usually 1–3 GB, depending on how many workspaces you’ve used.

Reinstalling later

If you’re uninstalling Slack just to fix a corrupted cache or sign-in loop (a common reason), removing all the support files and reinstalling fresh from slack.com almost always works. Make sure you remove the Application Support folder specifically — that’s where the corruption usually lives.

After reinstall, your workspaces will need to be added again, but Slack’s “Add a workspace” flow handles this in under a minute per team. Your message history is server-side, so nothing is lost.

That’s it. Slack uninstalled, leftovers cleared, login item gone. Your Mac should feel a touch lighter, and your ~/Library is one bundle ID cleaner than it was.