How to uninstall Anaconda on a Mac

Before you start: what goes with it

Everything inside the anaconda3 folder goes: the base environment, every environment created inside it, and every package conda downloaded. If you might want an environment again, export it first; Anaconda's own steps begin with this. Run the second line once for each environment the first one lists:

conda info --envs

conda env export --name <ENV_NAME> > <ENV_NAME>.yaml

The YAML file records the environment's packages, so it can be rebuilt after a reinstall. Keep it somewhere outside the Anaconda folder.

Two more checks from Anaconda's list, before anything is removed:

• Environments outside anaconda3. If the list shows an environment stored somewhere else, Anaconda recommends removing it before you uninstall, with the command below.
• Environments with conda-pypi packages. Activate each environment and run conda list. If conda-pypi appears in the Channel column, Anaconda says that environment must be deleted (conda remove --name <ENV_NAME> --all) before uninstalling.

conda remove --prefix <PATH_TO_ENV_DIRECTORY> --all

Find where it is installed

Anaconda can be installed in your home folder or in a system folder such as /opt, which is where the macOS .pkg installer can put it. Ask conda:

conda info --base

Look in that folder for uninstall.sh. Anaconda added it in Anaconda Distribution 2025.06 and Miniconda 24.11.1; an older install will not have it, and the manual steps further down apply instead.

Uninstall with Anaconda's script

1. Open a new Terminal window.
2. Run conda deactivate. The (base) at the start of the prompt should disappear.
3. Run the script for where Anaconda is installed. In your home folder:

conda deactivate
~/anaconda3/uninstall.sh

In /opt, with your administrator password:

conda deactivate
sudo -E /opt/anaconda3/uninstall.sh

On its own the script leaves a few files behind. To remove its package and index caches, the configuration file .condarc and the user data in ~/.conda as well, add its three optional flags (for an install in /opt, put sudo -E /opt/anaconda3/uninstall.sh in front of them instead):

~/anaconda3/uninstall.sh --remove-caches --remove-config-files user --remove-user-data

Anaconda's own cautions: the flags are not recommended if you have more than one conda installation; and if files outside the install folder are symbolic links, only the links may be removed, leaving the files they point to for you to delete.

Older installs: by hand

Without uninstall.sh, Anaconda's manual route is three steps:

1. Take conda out of your shell profile. Optionally, remove conda's initialisation from your shell's startup files with the commands below.
2. Delete the anaconda3 folder (for an install in /opt, sudo rm -rf /opt/anaconda3).
3. Optionally, delete the configuration and data in your home folder. Keep .condarc if it holds settings you want for a reinstall.

conda activate
conda init --reverse --all

rm -rf ~/anaconda3

rm -rf ~/.condarc ~/.conda ~/.continuum

rm -rf deletes outright, with no Trash and no undo, so read each path twice. For the folder in your home folder there is a gentler way: in Finder press Shift-Command-G, type ~, and drag anaconda3 to the Trash. It can then come back until you empty the Trash.

Miniconda and Navigator

• Miniconda uninstalls the same way, with miniconda3 in place of anaconda3 in every path: ~/miniconda3/uninstall.sh, or sudo -E /opt/miniconda3/uninstall.sh. If you installed the protected base installer, the folder is miniconda3_pbe.
• Anaconda Navigator is a package in the base environment, not a separate install. Removing it (conda remove --name base anaconda-navigator) leaves conda, your environments and your packages where they are, so it is not an uninstall of Anaconda.

Checking it has gone

Close Terminal and open a new window. If (base) no longer appears in the prompt, the uninstall worked. Anaconda notes, as a known issue, that the uninstall can leave artefacts such as shortcuts behind, to be deleted by hand. To see whether any of the usual folders remain, and how big they are:

du -sh ~/anaconda3 ~/miniconda3 /opt/anaconda3 /opt/miniconda3 ~/.conda 2>/dev/null

A line for a folder means it is still there. No output means none of them are.

Where the app comes in

RefreshYourMac has no Anaconda or conda category, so the uninstall itself is Anaconda's job, with the steps above. Anaconda is not a single app in Applications, which is what RefreshYourMac's Uninstall an App works on, and it does not look in hidden folders in your home folder, so ~/.conda and ~/.condarc stay a hand job. Its Project Build Folders category lists a project's own .venv Python environment, but only when the project has a requirements.txt or pyproject.toml to rebuild it from; conda environments are not in it. For what other developer tools leave on a Mac, see the Mac cleaner for developers, and for leftovers in general, the leftover files after uninstalling an app.