How do I Uninstall Adobe Lightroom from Mac

Trying to uninstall Adobe Photoshop Lightroom on your Mac? Have no clue how to completely remove the traces it created on the system? If you are faced with these questions, read through this post to learn the correct way of uninstalling Lightroom.

Adobe Lightroom is an image organization and manipulation software recommended by many professional photographers for its outstanding performance. However, this app may not be quite friendly to amateur, due to the ‘high’ sale price and learning cost. For this sake, some users may choose to remove Lightroom after the trial expires.

Here are some points you should know before uninstalling Lightroom:

First of all, if you are trying to reinstall Lightroom and keep your customization settings, you may not need to uninstall it, because re-installation will cover the app files but does not touch the personal data in this app. Some users may encounter problems in using Lightroom, most of which can be fixed by re-installing the app.

Secondly, if you desire to remove Lightroom and no longer use it any more, you will need to do more than simply dragging Lightroom into Trash. Similar to other third party apps, Lightroom creates files and folder outside the app package, including preferences, catalog, caches, presets, templates, serial number and other supporting files. Those items require you to delete manually if you wish to have a clean uninstall.

Thirdly, before you proceed to uninstall Lightroom, make sure to shut down the app entirely. To do so, right click on Lightroom if it appears in the Dock, and choose Quit. If you still encounter error message saying that Lightroom is in use, launch Activity Monitor to locate any process pertaining to Adobe products, and kill it if have any.

Now, here are multiple options to remove Lightroom from your Mac:

1. Uninstall Lightroom from /Application folder

The trash-to-delete method can be applied to delete most third-party apps:

• In Finder, click Applications in the sidebar to access to the folder
• Select Lightroom, drag the app icon to the Trash in Dock and drop it there. Alternatively, you can right click on its icon and choose Move to Trash
• Choose Finder > Empty Trash from the top menu bar to delete the app permanently (or you can head to Trash and delete the app without touching other files in Trash)

2. Uninstall Lightroom by its own uninstall tool

If the Lightroom you installed is contained in the the Adobe Lightroom folder, the folder by default will contains an app labeled Uninstall Adobe Lightroom. So:

• In Finder, locate the folder named Adobe Lightroom in /Applications folder
• Double click to launch the Uninstall Adobe Lightroom app in the folder
• Follow the onscreen instructions in the wizard to complete the uninstallation

3. Uninstall Lightroom (App Store version) in Launchpad

If you’ve install Lightroom in the Mac App Store, you can take this method:

• Open up Launchpad in Dock, through Spotlight or by gesture shortcut
• Type Lightroom in the search box, and then hold on Lightroom icon until it begins to wiggle (or simply press and hold the Alt/Option key until all apps start to jiggle)
• Click X that appears in the Lightroom icon, and click Delete in the pop-up window

4. Uninstall Lightroom with help of Osx Uninstaller

• Download Osx Uninstaller in the homepage, and install it on your Mac
• Launch this app, click Register and follow prompts to activate the app
• Select Lightroom in the interface, and click Run Analysis to start scanning
• Click Complete Uninstall, and then click Yes to execute the uninstall

If you are trying to uninstall several apps, you can repeat the easy steps to get rid of them as well as the leftovers associated with the apps. Note that this app is paid. Yet, after uninstalling Lightroom by any of the first three options, you will need to continue the removal of Lightroom leftovers, while deleting Lightroom by Osx Uninstaller will save you from the trouble of manually detecting related items.

Here are the possible locations that may contain Lightroom-associated files:

(1)/Users/[username]/Pictures/Lightroom/
(2)/Users/[username]/Library/Preferences/
(3)/Users/[user name]/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/

The Library folder is hidden by default on Mac OS X 10.7 and later. To access to this directory, open up Finder, then press Option and choose Go > Library in the menu bar.

How to quickly locate Lightroom components? Use the Search feature in Finder to display items that contain the keyword of Lightroom. More details can be found here.