How to uninstall Android Studio completely on a Mac

Step 1: remove the app

1. 1Quit Android Studio and any running emulators.
2. 2In Finder, open Applications and drag Android Studio to the Trash. A Canary or preview build is a separate app, often named Android Studio Preview; remove it the same way.
3. 3If you installed it with JetBrains Toolbox, uninstall it from Toolbox instead. If you used Homebrew, run brew uninstall --cask android-studio.
4. 4Empty the Trash once you're sure. Until then, everything you moved can be put back.

Step 2: delete Android Studio's settings, caches and logs

• Settings and plugins: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/AndroidStudio<version>
• Caches and indexes: ~/Library/Caches/Google/AndroidStudio<version>
• Logs: ~/Library/Logs/Google/AndroidStudio<version>
• Preferences: ~/Library/Preferences/com.google.android.studio.plist, plus com.android.Emulator.plist from the emulator.
• Versions before 4.1 used ~/Library/Preferences/AndroidStudio<version> and similar folders without Google in the path. Delete those too if an old install left them.
• Delete only the AndroidStudio folders inside Google. The same Google folders hold Chrome's data.

Android Studio keeps a folder per version in three places, named like AndroidStudio2025.1 (AndroidStudioPreview for Canary and RC builds). Since Android Studio 4.1, Google lists them as:

rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/AndroidStudio*
rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/Google/AndroidStudio*
rm -rf ~/Library/Logs/Google/AndroidStudio*
rm -f ~/Library/Preferences/com.google.android.studio.plist ~/Library/Preferences/com.android.Emulator.plist

Step 3: decide about the SDK, emulators and Gradle

• ~/Library/Android/sdk: the Android SDK. Flutter, React Native and command-line Gradle builds use it. Delete it only if you've stopped building Android apps.
• ~/.android: your emulators (in avd), adb keys and the debug keystore. Back up debug.keystore first if its SHA-1 is registered anywhere, such as Firebase or Google Sign-In, because a new keystore has a different fingerprint.
• ~/.gradle: Gradle's cache and wrapper downloads, shared by every Gradle project, including Java and Kotlin projects in IntelliJ. Safe to delete; it's rebuilt on the next build, with a download.
• ~/AndroidStudioProjects: your code, if you kept the default project folder. Keep it.

These are shared with other tools, so removing Android Studio doesn't mean you have to remove them. Check their size and who uses them first; zsh prints no matches found for a folder that isn't there, which is harmless.

du -sh ~/Library/Android/sdk ~/.android ~/.gradle
rm -rf ~/Library/Android/sdk
rm -rf ~/.android
rm -rf ~/.gradle

If you still build Flutter apps

Unless you set a JDK, Flutter uses the one bundled with the latest Android Studio it finds, so after removing the app, Android builds can fail to find Java. Install a JDK, point Flutter at it with flutter config --jdk-dir, and check with flutter doctor. If you keep or reinstall the SDK somewhere else, tell Flutter with flutter config --android-sdk.

flutter config --jdk-dir /path/to/jdk
flutter config --android-sdk ~/Library/Android/sdk
flutter doctor -v

What Stackyard does here

Stackyard, a free and open-source app for Mac and Windows, doesn't uninstall Android Studio or clean its settings, caches and logs, so do steps 1 and 2 by hand. It helps with step 3: it lists the Android SDK's platforms, NDKs and system images with the projects and emulators that use them, your emulators with their size and last start, and the Gradle caches and wrapper versions, and it moves what you remove to the Trash. For Flutter apps it checks which Java a project's Gradle accepts and offers to point Flutter at a matching JDK.

Questions

Does dragging Android Studio to the Trash uninstall it completely?

No. It removes the app, but its settings, caches, logs, the SDK, emulators and Gradle files stay in your Library and home folders until you delete them.

How do I uninstall Android Studio from the Terminal?

Run rm -rf '/Applications/Android Studio.app', then the rm commands for the AndroidStudio folders in ~/Library shown above. Add the SDK, ~/.android and ~/.gradle only if nothing else needs them.

Will uninstalling Android Studio delete my projects?

No. Projects stay wherever you saved them, by default in ~/AndroidStudioProjects.

How do I uninstall the Android SDK on a Mac?

Delete ~/Library/Android/sdk, or remove single packages in Android Studio's SDK Manager or with sdkmanager --uninstall. Remove the ANDROID_HOME line from your shell profile too.

How much space will uninstalling Android Studio free?

It depends on what you remove. The app itself is the fixed part; the SDK, emulators and Gradle cache grow with every version and device you've added, so run the du -sh command above to see your own numbers before deciding.

How do I remove leftovers from old Android Studio versions?

Each version keeps its own AndroidStudio<version> folder in Application Support, Caches and Logs under Google. Delete the folders for versions you no longer run and keep the current one.