How to uninstall Docker on a Mac

Before you start: what goes with it

Docker's documentation is plain about it: uninstalling Docker Desktop destroys Docker containers, images, volumes and other Docker-related data on the Mac. Images you pulled can be pulled again. A volume holding a database you built locally cannot. If anything in a volume matters, back it up first; Docker's documentation has a back-up and restore section for this.

Uninstall from Docker Desktop

1. Open Docker Desktop.
2. In the top-right corner of the Dashboard, select the Troubleshoot icon.
3. Select Uninstall, and confirm with Uninstall again.
4. Drag Docker from Applications to the Trash, and empty the Trash.

Or from Terminal

If Docker Desktop will not open, run its uninstaller directly:

/Applications/Docker.app/Contents/MacOS/uninstall

It asks for your password. If it ends with an operation not permitted error about ~/Library/Containers/com.docker.docker, Docker's own note is that the uninstall has still succeeded. That folder can be removed afterwards once Terminal has Full Disk Access (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access). Then move Docker to the Trash.

The folders it leaves behind

Docker's steps finish by removing two folders by hand:

rm -rf ~/Library/Group\ Containers/group.com.docker
rm -rf ~/.docker

rm -rf deletes outright, with no Trash; if you would rather be able to change your mind, go to each folder with Shift-Command-G in Finder and drag it to the Trash instead. To see what they hold before and after:

du -sh ~/Library/Containers/com.docker.docker ~/Library/Group\ Containers/group.com.docker ~/.docker 2>/dev/null

If Terminal cannot read the first folder, it needs Full Disk Access, as above. Anything else named after Docker in your Library can be found by its bundle ID, the way the leftover files after uninstalling an app describes.

If you are coming back to Docker

If the aim is space rather than getting rid of Docker, uninstalling is the long way round: every image comes back as you pull it. Removing the images and volumes you no longer use, inside Docker, frees space and keeps the ones you still need.

Where the app comes in

RefreshYourMac has no Docker category, so the uninstall itself is Docker's job, with the steps above. Its Uninstall an App, described in how to uninstall apps on a Mac, searches both Library folders by the bundle IDs of an app and its helpers and lists every piece with its size before anything moves; your own files go to the Trash, and root-owned ones are removed only after the password prompt. It does not look in hidden folders in your home folder, so ~/.docker stays a hand job. Uninstall an App is in the download edition, not the Mac App Store edition. For more of what developer tools leave behind, see the Mac cleaner for developers.