How to Completely Uninstall Chrome on Mac

Why Dragging Chrome to the Trash Is Not Enough

On macOS, moving an app to the Trash deletes only the application bundle — the .app file itself. It does not touch the support files the app scattered across your Library folder while it was installed. For most apps that leftover data is small. For Chrome, it can be enormous.

Chrome stores your entire browser profile — bookmarks, history, extensions, cached web assets, and per-profile data — inside ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome. This folder alone frequently reaches several gigabytes, and on a machine with multiple profiles it can be much larger. On top of that, Chrome installs a background component called Google Software Update (Keystone) that keeps running and periodically checks for updates even after the app is gone. A clean uninstall means removing all of it, not just the app.

What Chrome Leaves Behind

A full Chrome installation writes files to several locations in your user Library. These are the folders you need to clean up:

• Application Support: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome — your profiles, bookmarks, history, extensions, and settings. Usually the largest leftover.
• Caches: ~/Library/Caches/Google/Chrome and ~/Library/Caches/com.google.Chrome — cached web assets.
• Preferences: ~/Library/Preferences/com.google.Chrome.plist — Chrome's app-level settings.
• Saved State: ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.google.Chrome.savedState — window and tab restore data.
• The updater: ~/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate (and a system copy under /Library/Google) — the Keystone background updater that keeps running after Chrome is removed.

Leaving these behind wastes disk space and, in the case of the updater, keeps a background process running for an app you no longer have. A complete uninstall clears every one of these.

How to Uninstall Chrome Manually

You can fully remove Chrome using only Finder. Follow these steps in order, and quit Chrome before you begin.

1. 1
   Quit Chrome completely. Press Command + Q. If Chrome will not quit, open Activity Monitor, search for "Chrome", and force-quit any remaining Google Chrome processes.
2. 2
   Delete the app. Open your Applications folder, find Google Chrome, and drag it to the Trash (or right-click and choose Move to Trash).
3. 3
   Open the Library folder. In Finder, press Command + Shift + G, type ~/Library, and press Return.
4. 4
   Remove the profile data. Go to Application Support, open the Google folder, and move the Chrome folder to the Trash. This is the big one.
5. 5
   Remove the caches. Go to ~/Library/Caches and delete Google/Chrome and any com.google.Chrome folder.
6. 6
   Remove preferences and saved state. In ~/Library/Preferences, delete com.google.Chrome.plist. In ~/Library/Saved Application State, delete com.google.Chrome.savedState.
7. 7
   Remove the updater. Delete ~/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate. This stops the background Keystone updater from running.
8. 8
   Empty the Trash. Right-click the Trash in your Dock and choose Empty Trash. The disk space is not reclaimed until you do this.

How to Uninstall Chrome the Easy Way with TrimyMac

The manual route works, but it requires visiting five or six hidden folders and knowing exactly which files belong to Chrome. TrimyMac's uninstaller does it for you. It finds the Chrome app together with every associated file — profile data, caches, preferences, saved state, and the Keystone updater — and removes them all in a single action, so nothing is left behind.

Open TrimyMac, choose the uninstaller, select Google Chrome from the list of installed apps, review the associated files it found, and confirm. Everything Chrome scattered across your Library is removed together, and the reclaimed space is reported instantly.

Removing the Google Updater for Good

Even after Chrome is deleted, Google's Keystone updater can linger and continue running in the background. To be thorough, remove the updater folder at ~/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate and, if present, the system-level copy at /Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate (this one may require administrator authentication). Also check for launch agents named com.google.keystone.* in ~/Library/LaunchAgents and remove them so the updater does not relaunch. Once these are gone, no Google background process should remain.

Reinstalling Chrome Later

If you remove Chrome and later want it back, simply download a fresh copy from Google's website and install it. If you enabled Sync before uninstalling, sign in with the same Google account and your bookmarks, history, extensions, and settings will download automatically. A clean uninstall followed by a fresh install is also a reliable way to fix a Chrome installation that has become corrupted or unstable — it clears out any broken profile data that a simple reinstall over the top would keep.