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How to Properly Uninstall Spotify From Your Mac (Including the Cache)

Remove Spotify from your Mac including the offline downloads, the persistent cache, login items, and the leftover preferences.

7 min read

Spotify on Mac caches aggressively. Every track you’ve streamed in the last few weeks lives in ~/Library/Caches/com.spotify.client/ as a chunked file, even on the free tier. If you’ve used Spotify Premium and downloaded playlists for offline listening, those downloads can run into tens of gigabytes. Three years of Spotify use can easily put 8–15 GB of cached audio on your disk that survives a casual drag-to-trash.

Here’s the full Spotify uninstall on macOS Sonoma 14 and Sequoia 15.

Sign out and quit

Open Spotify. Click your profile icon (top-right) → Log out. This invalidates the local session and clears some cached credentials.

Then quit: Spotify → Quit Spotify, or Cmd+Q.

In Activity Monitor, search “Spotify” — you should see one or two helper processes alongside the main app. Force-quit anything still running.

Drag Spotify to the Trash

Open Finder → Applications. Drag Spotify to the Trash. The app bundle is around 270 MB.

If you have the Mac App Store version of Spotify (less common but possible), it’s a different bundle — check ~/Library/Containers/ for any Spotify-related sandbox containers.

Where Spotify stores data

Spotify’s bundle ID is com.spotify.client. The cache and downloaded music live under this ID:

  • ~/Library/Application Support/Spotify/ — settings, sync state, playlists database, downloaded music (the big one)
  • ~/Library/Caches/com.spotify.client/ — streaming cache, image cache (also large)
  • ~/Library/Caches/com.spotify.client.helper/ — helper process cache
  • ~/Library/Preferences/com.spotify.client.plist — preferences
  • ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.spotify.client.savedState/ — window state
  • ~/Library/Cookies/com.spotify.client.binarycookies — cookies
  • ~/Library/HTTPStorages/com.spotify.client/ — modern web storage
  • ~/Library/Logs/Spotify/ — diagnostic logs

The two biggest folders by far are Application Support/Spotify/PersistentCache/ and Caches/com.spotify.client/Storage/. On a recent cleanup of a colleague’s Mac, those two together held 11 GB.

Open Finder, Shift+Cmd+G, paste each path, drag what’s there to the Trash.

Tip: If you just want to clear Spotify's cache without uninstalling, you can do it from inside the app — Spotify → Preferences → Storage → Clear Cache. This clears ~/Library/Caches/com.spotify.client/Storage/ but leaves your offline downloads alone. Useful if Spotify's eaten 5+ GB and you don't want to lose downloaded music.

Login items

Spotify adds itself to login items by default.

  1. System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions.
  2. Find Spotify under “Open at Login” — click minus.
  3. Check “Allow in the Background” — toggle off if listed.

If you don’t see Spotify in either list, it’s already gone.

The Spotify menu bar widget

Spotify can run as a menu bar app showing track info. If you’d enabled this, an “SpotifyHelper” or similar entry might exist:

ls ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ | grep -i spotify

If anything shows, remove:

rm ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.spotify.*

This is rare — most Spotify users don’t have the menu bar widget enabled.

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

Keychain cleanup

Spotify stores its OAuth tokens and account credentials in the Keychain.

  1. Open Keychain Access.
  2. Search “Spotify.”
  3. Delete the matching entries — typically your Spotify account, “Spotify Safe Storage,” and a few cookie entries.

If you reinstall later, you’ll just sign in again and fresh entries will be created.

URL handler

Spotify registers as the handler for spotify: URLs (used in Spotify links from the web). After uninstall, the handler registration may linger. If spotify: links throw errors:

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

This rebuilds Launch Services. Most people never notice.

What about playlists I downloaded for offline?

Those downloads live in ~/Library/Application Support/Spotify/PersistentCache/. Once you delete this folder, the offline copies are gone — even if you reinstall Spotify, you’ll need to re-download playlists.

Note that Spotify’s offline files aren’t standard MP3s or AAC files — they’re encrypted chunks tied to your Spotify account. You can’t extract them as music files. Deleting them just frees up disk space; nothing of value is lost.

If you’ve also bought music from Spotify (the platform briefly let users buy tracks during certain promotions), those aren’t stored locally either. They’re in your account.

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

Empty the Trash

Empty the Trash. The space recovered is often shocking — 5 to 15 GB is normal for a long-term Spotify user, sometimes much more for Premium users with extensive offline downloads.

If macOS warns “files in use,” check Activity Monitor for any Spotify helpers still running.

Manual vs. Sweep

Spotify is straightforward as Mac uninstalls go. The data is concentrated in two big folders (Application Support/Spotify/ and Caches/com.spotify.client/), and clearing those gets you 95% of the way. The smaller files (preferences, cookies, saved state) are easy to find.

Sweep’s value here is mostly in showing you the size total before you delete. Spotify’s cache is one of the most surprising recoveries on a typical Mac — most people don’t realize how much is there until they see “9.8 GB will be removed” on screen.

Spotify Connect and other devices

Uninstalling Spotify on this Mac doesn’t affect:

  • Your Spotify account
  • Spotify on your phone, iPad, or other devices
  • Your playlists, follows, or library
  • Spotify Connect on speakers, TVs, or game consoles

Everything except this one Mac client stays exactly as it was. If you sign back in on the desktop later, your library reappears immediately.

Reinstalling

If you ever go back to Spotify, download from spotify.com/download. The Mac App Store version is also available but generally a release behind the direct download. The fresh install creates clean cache and Application Support folders. None of the old data is needed; in fact, occasional reinstalls can fix audio glitches or sync issues that build up over time.

That’s Spotify fully removed. Your Mac is several gigabytes lighter, your menu bar is one icon shorter, and your music is exactly where it was — in the cloud, ready to stream from any device.

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