How to uninstall VMware Fusion on a Mac

Before you start: your virtual machines stay

This is the part that surprises people. Broadcom's own note is that uninstalling Fusion does not affect or delete any of your existing virtual machines. Each one is a package of files that stays on the disk, at whatever size it has grown to, until you remove it yourself.

Unless you chose another folder when you created them, Fusion saves virtual machines in one of two places:

• ~/Virtual Machines, for a new installation of Fusion 11 or later.
• ~/Documents/Virtual Machines, for versions before Fusion 11, and for later versions upgraded from one.

If you saved one somewhere else, that place became the default for the next. To see what the two default folders hold, in Terminal:

du -sh ~/Virtual\ Machines ~/Documents/Virtual\ Machines 2>/dev/null

Decide about each virtual machine before Fusion goes, while you can still open it. One you want to keep, or might run again with a later Fusion, should be copied to another drive first. Anything saved inside a virtual machine is in its files, so deleting them loses it.

Deleting the virtual machines you no longer need

With Fusion still installed, Broadcom's steps are:

1. Shut down or power off the virtual machine.
2. Choose Window → Virtual Machine Library and click the virtual machine's thumbnail.
3. Choose Edit → Delete.
4. In the dialog, choose Move to Trash. Keep File only removes it from the library and leaves the files where they are; Delete Permanently deletes the files outright, without the Trash.

Fusion may offer different options depending on the kind of virtual machine. Without Fusion, the same thing can be done in Finder: drag the virtual machine's package from its folder to the Trash.

Removing the app

1. Power off or suspend all running virtual machines, and quit Fusion.
2. Drag the VMware Fusion app (VMware Fusion Pro, in Broadcom's current documentation) from Applications to the Trash, entering an administrator name and password if asked.
3. Empty the Trash.

The files it leaves behind

Broadcom's knowledge base lists the support files to delete by hand, for Fusion 10 and later. Depending on the Mac, some may not be there. In the system Library, which needs an administrator password to change:

/Library/Application Support/VMware/VMware Fusion
/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion
/Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion

There is one more in the same place, /Library/Application Support/VMware/Usbarb.rules. Broadcom's warning is not to delete it if you use any other VMware product. In your own Library:

~/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion
~/Library/Caches/com.vmware.fusion
~/Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion
~/Library/Preferences/com.vmware.fusion.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.vmware.fusion.plist.lockfile
~/Library/Preferences/com.vmware.fusion.LSSharedFileList.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.vmware.fusion.LSSharedFileList.plist.lockfile
~/Library/Preferences/com.vmware.fusionDaemon.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.vmware.fusionDaemon.plist.lockfile
~/Library/Preferences/com.vmware.fusionStartMenu.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.vmware.fusionStartMenu.plist.lockfile

To remove them, press Shift-Command-G in Finder, paste a path, and drag the folder or file to the Trash. That way nothing is gone for good until you empty the Trash, and macOS asks for your password for the ones in /Library. The ~ is your home folder; its Library is hidden in Finder, but Go to Folder opens it anyway. For anything else named after VMware, the leftover files after uninstalling an app covers where to look.

Where the app comes in

RefreshYourMac has no category for VMware Fusion or for virtual machines, so deciding about each virtual machine stays with you, with the steps above. Its Uninstall an App, described in how to uninstall apps on a Mac, removes the app and searches both Library folders by the bundle IDs of the app and its helpers, and by the app's own name in the places apps use one, listing every piece with its size before anything moves. It will not find everything on Broadcom's list (folders named after VMware rather than the app, for one), so compare the two and remove what is left by hand. Your own files go to the Trash; root-owned ones are removed only after the password prompt. Uninstall an App is in the download edition, not the Mac App Store edition. What an uninstaller app does covers the rest.