Microsoft officially discontinued Visual Studio for Mac in August 2024, meaning it no longer receives updates or support. This is one of the reasons why you may need to uninstall Visual Studio from your Mac.
This article will explain two ways to completely uninstall Visual Studio from your Mac, including all of its support files.
Contents:
Before we start
App Cleaner & Uninstaller
What is Visual Studio?
Visual Studio for Mac was an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft designed for macOS. It provided tools for developing applications in .NET, C#, F#, and Xamarin, allowing developers to build web, mobile, and cloud applications.
The first version of Visual Studio (Visual Studio 97) was released in 1997 and bundled several Microsoft development tools. Today Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code together have more than 25 million active users.
According to the Stack Overflow Dev Survey, it remains the preferred code editor, with usage increasing from 75% to 81% among developers.
Why to remove Visual Studio?
Since Microsoft officially discontinued Visual Studio for Mac in August 2024, you may find it necessary to remove the app from your Mac. Also, there are some more possible reasons why you may need to remove it:
- When an app no longer receives updates, security patches, or bug fixes, it becomes less secure and stable.
- The app may become incompatible with newer macOS versions.
- Visual Studio and its support files may take up several gigabytes of storage.
- Since it’s discontinued, any existing bugs will remain unfixed.
- Some users reported that Visual Studio consumes high CPU and RAM.
How to Manually Uninstall Visual Studio from Mac
When installing Visual Studio Community, its installer requires you to install additional necessary components. Users install Visual Studio for different reasons, so you might have installed various additional apps on your computer along with the Visual Studio application without realizing it. For example, if you installed the components of Xamarin.Forms or ASP.NET Core, you will have to remove them as well.
It is important to understand that all programs consist of numerous files: an executable file, logs, caches, libraries, service files, and so on. If you wish to completely get rid of an application, you should remove all its service files from your Mac. This step will help prevent unwelcome technical issues with other programs on your computer in the future.
No matter, you have to uninstall Visual Studio Code or Visual Studio Community for Mac, the steps required to completely uninstall the apps are almost the same:
- Quit Visual Studio.
- Open Finder and go to the Applications folder.
- Select Visual Studio and remove it.
- Find Visual Studio’s service files. By default, applications’ service files are stored in the Library folder. To gain access to this folder, go to the Finder’s menu bar, click Go → Go to Folder.
- In the window that appears type ~/Library and press Return.
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Here in the Library folder remove all files and folders related to Visual Studio. The files differ depending on which application you are uninstalling (Visual Studio Code or Visual Studio Community). Check the following directories for Visual Studio service files:
- ~/Library/Caches
- ~/Library/Application Support
- ~/Library/Preferences
- ~/Library/Logs
- ~/Library/Saved Application State
Note:
For the Visual Studio Code application you must search for files and folders having “code,” “VScode,” and “microsoft.VScode” words in their names. Files and folders associated with Visual Studio Community contain the “Visual Studio” phrase in their names. - Repeat the steps listed above to remove the rest of the Visual Studio components related to Xamarin.Forms or ASP.NET Core.
- Complete the deletion of Visual Studio by emptying the Trash bin.
To ensure that you have deleted all useless files from your Mac, we recommend that you use the free Nektony program, Funter. Funter scans your disk and finds hidden files by name. Just launch Funter, type the name in the search box, and hit Return. In the window that appears, you will see a list of items that you can reveal in Finder and delete them.
Uninstall Visual Studio – Guaranteed method
To easily and quickly uninstall Mac Visual Studio is to use Nektony’s uninstallation tool, App Cleaner & Uninstaller. This tool enables you to remove useless apps and their remains with just a few clicks:
- Run App Cleaner & Uninstaller.
- In the Applications tab select Visual Studio.
- Click the Uninstall button.
- Confirm the removal.
- Empty the Trash bin to complete the uninstallation.
How to reset Visual Studio
Resetting Visual Studio for Mac can help fix performance issues, crashes, and configuration errors. Instead of reinstalling the app, a reset removes all settings and caches, restoring it to its default state. You can reset the app using App Cleaner & Uninstaller.
- Open the uninstaller.
- Select Visual Studio from the list of scanned apps.
- Right-click it.
- Choose Reset Application.
- Confirm.
Daily, we install numerous applications on our computers. If you don’t use some apps, you should uninstall them to stop taking up valuable space on your disk. When you uninstall applications, it is important to do this correctly and entirely by removing all of their remaining files. You can find service files manually or use App Cleaner & Uninstaller, which will do this task quickly and safely.
