How to safely uninstall Final Cut Pro from your Mac

Final Cut Pro is a professional workhorse optimized for Apple hardware, but it’s also a heavy one. Whether you’re switching to another video editing software, fixing a persistent crash bug, or just reclaiming disk space, a clean uninstall is essential.

Here’s the catch: despite the app being made by Apple, simply dragging it to the Trash won’t work. FCP leaves behind quite a lot of “digital dust”, such as caches, preferences, and support files, that can cause problems later. Or, at the very least, it consumes the space you want to free up.

This guide will show you two ways to completely remove Final Cut Pro.

Also, there’s a shortcut!

Final Cut Pro is a professional app that scatters files, caches, and scripts deep in your Mac’s Library folders.

If you’d rather skip the tedious task of manually digging through these hidden directories, App Cleaner & Uninstaller by Nektony offers a quicker solution. It automatically detects every single FCP component and removes them all in just a couple of clicks.

App Cleaner & Uninstaller

Download

Why uninstall Final Cut Pro?

While FCP is a fantastic tool, there are plenty of valid reasons to want a clean break. From a pro’s perspective, it usually boils down to one of these:

• To free up massive amounts of disk space. This is the most common reason. FCP’s libraries, render files, and media caches can consume tens of gigabytes of storage space quietly.
• To switch to another software. The “industry standard” pull of Adobe Premiere or the powerful color grading in DaVinci Resolve are tempting. Or maybe you just tried the FCP trial (like this Apple Discussions user) and you now you’re ready for a full version.
• To perform a “clean” reinstall. Sometimes, the app just gets buggy. You might see a “Share Failed” error on export, or the app might crash on launch. A full, clean reinstall is often a more reliable fix than Apple’s official suggestions.
• To resolve compatibility issues. After a major macOS update, an older version of Final Cut Pro might become unstable or refuse to launch.

Before you uninstall: How to remove or back up your FCP libraries

Let’s get one common fear out of the way. The uninstall steps in this guide will not delete your actual video projects.

Final Cut Pro saves your work as “Libraries” (files ending in .fcpbundle), which are usually stored in your Movies folder, completely separate from the application itself.

That said, it is always a good idea to back up your important libraries before uninstalling any professional software. If you’re troubleshooting a bug, this ensures you have a safe copy before you reinstall.

You can back up your libraries to an external hard drive. For the official Apple-recommended method, you can follow their guide on managing Final Cut Pro libraries.

How to uninstall Final Cut Pro manually

In this manual “digital housekeeping” process, you’ll need to hunt down all the hidden service files, so follow these steps carefully.

Step 1: Quit Final Cut Pro

First, make sure the app isn’t running. If it’s frozen, you can force quit it.

1. Open Activity Monitor (you can find it using Spotlight).
2. In the search bar, type “Final Cut Pro“.
3. If you see any processes, select them and click the (X) button at the top of the window to Stop or Force Quit them.

Step 2: Move the application to the Trash

This is the easy part.

1. Open Finder and go to your Applications folder.
2. Find Final Cut Pro.app and drag it to the Trash.

Step 3: Remove service files from your Library

This is the most important part. We need to get to your hidden Library folder in Finder.

1. Click the Finder icon in your Dock.
2. In the top menu bar, click Go → Go to Folder… (or press Shift+Cmd+G).

Now, you will copy and paste the following paths into the box, one by one. After arriving at each location, find and delete the specified files or folders (if they exist).

• Go to:

  ~/Library/Application Support/

  Copy

  and remove: The Final Cut Pro folder.
• Go to:

  ~/Library/Application Scripts/

  Copy

  

  • Remove: The following four items:

    • com.apple.FinalCut

      Copy

    • com.apple.FinalCut.FxAnalyzer

      Copy

    • com.apple.Compressor.BluRayH264Encoder

      Copy

    • com.apple.Compressor.DolbyDigitalEncoder

      Copy

  
• Go to:

  ~/Library/Containers/

  Copy

  • Remove: The following four items:

    • com.apple.FinalCut

      Copy

    • com.apple.FinalCut.FxAnalyzer

      Copy

    • com.apple.Compressor.BluRayH264Encoder

      Copy

    • com.apple.Compressor.DolbyDigitalEncoder

      Copy

• Go to:

  ~/Library/Application Support/com.apple.sharedfilelist/com.apple.LSSharedFileList.ApplicationRecentDocuments/

  Copy

  • Remove: The

    com.apple.finalcut.sfl4

    Copy

    file.
• Go to:

  ~/Library/Logs/AppAnalytics/

  Copy

  (Note: If this folder doesn’t exist, ignore this step.)
  • Find: Search for files starting with com.apple.FinalCut..
  • Remove: Delete any .json log files you find.

Step 4: Clear temporary folders (optional)

If you opened Final Cut Pro at least once after your latest Mac powerup, it might have generated some temporary files. Here’s how to remove them.

/private/var/folders

1. Open Go to Folder… (use Shift+Cmd+G).
2. Go to:

   /private/var/folders

   Copy

   .
3. In the Finder search bar (top-right), type

   com.apple.finalcut

   Copy

   and press Enter.
4. Make sure the search is limited to the “folders” folder, not “This Mac”.
5. Drag all found files and folders to the Trash.
6. Repeat this search for

   com.apple.Compressor

   Copy

   and delete those results as well.

Step 5: Empty the Trash

Once you’ve dragged all those files to the Trash, right-click your Trash icon in the Dock and select Empty Trash to permanently delete them. It’s a good idea to restart your Mac afterward to complete the process.

As you can see, that was a lot of digging (a 6-7 minute chore, by our test).

How to uninstall Final Cut Pro automatically

If you’re like me and prefer to spend your time not digging through Library folders, there’s a much faster way. A dedicated uninstaller like App Cleaner & Uninstaller does the entire job in just a few clicks.

My tests show the whole process takes about 30 seconds (versus 6-7 minutes for the manual hunt).

Here’s how to do it:

1. Download and launch App Cleaner & Uninstaller. It will scan your Mac for all installed applications.
2. Find Final Cut Pro in the list (you can use the search bar).
3. Click the Uninstall button.
4. The app will show you a list of every single file, folder, and script related to FCP.
5. Click the Remove button, and the app will completely uninstall Final Cut Pro, including all leftovers.

That’s it, you have Final Cut Pro properly removed from your Mac!

A Note on Resetting Final Cut Pro

If you’re uninstalling FCP just to fix a bug or a crash, you might not need a full reinstall. Often, the problem is just a corrupted preference file.

App Cleaner & Uninstaller can reset the application to its “factory-new” state without deleting it. In the app, select Final Cut Pro from the list and choose Reset Application in the right-click menu.

This will clear all its caches, logs, and preferences but will leave the main application file untouched. It’s an excellent way to troubleshoot many issues with Final Cut Pro.

A clean break: My final take on Final Cut Pro

To be honest, Final Cut Pro is still my go-to app. I have a hobby of making movies about our family’s everyday life, and after all these years, it just feels like home. It’s grown on me so much that I have a real resistance to trying anything else. Plus, the new machine learning features Apple keeps adding only increase the joy of editing.

But that’s my workflow. I can easily imagine you might be switching to a rival or simply no longer need this beast of a software.

In that case, removing Final Cut Pro properly is a good practice. It ensures your Mac is clean, frees up gigabytes of space, and gets your system ready for whatever you plan to install next. And as we’ve seen, App Cleaner & Uninstaller provides a quick, simple way to do that without the manual hunt.