Games can take up a lot of room, especially when you’ve got several alongside apps, documents, videos, and files. In this article, we cover how to uninstall Steam games on a Mac, which is a little more tricky than dragging it to the trash.

Uninstalling Steam games involves going through the application itself, which will delete the game on your Mac. However, you will still own the game (it will remain in your Steam account), but to play it again, you will need to download it.

How to uninstall Steam?

Steam isn’t a very lightweight app. It usually takes a lot of space and may be responsible for your Mac running slower than it should. In case you want to remove Steam for good, we will help you to uninstall it.

  1. Quit Steam.
  2. Open Finder and go to Applications. 
  3. Locate Steam and drag it to the Trash.
  4. In Finder, press Command + Shift + G.
  5. Type ~/Library/Application Support/ and press Return.
  6. Locate Steam and open it.
  7. In the folder, remove everything except the “steamapps” file to keep your Steam games. 
  8. Empty the Trash.

Although you removed the app and some of its files from your Mac, the leftover items may still be left. To search for the remaining data, press Command + Shift + G to open Finder’s Go to the folder menu. Type these paths in the form and look for files that have “steam” or “valve” in their names:

~/Library/Logs/

~/Library/Caches/

~/Library/Cookies/

~/Library/Preferences/

~/Library/LaunchAgents/

~/Library/Saved Application State/

Once you find such files, move them to the Trash. All Steam-related files are now deleted. 

There is another, quicker way to remove Steam. Using CleanMyMac, an app cleaner notarized by Apple, you can delete the app and its associated files altogether. If you install CleanMyMac, it will remind you to remove app leftovers when you drag the app to Trash. That’s how it looks:

You can then click Open CleanMyMac and remove the remaining files using the Leftovers tool. Move to the next step to learn how to delete Steam games on Mac.

Leftovers in the Uninstaller module of CMM

How to uninstall Steam games manually

  1. Open the Steam application — either in your Dock, Desktop, or Applications folder.
  2. Go to the Library tab in the app. Here, you should see every game you’ve downloaded and bought through Steam.
  3. Now, right-click or control-click the game you want to uninstall from your Mac. A drop-down of options should appear.
  4. Click Manage > Uninstall.
  5. Steam will ask if you’re certain you want to delete it. Confirming that will uninstall the local game files from your Mac. 
  6. Click Uninstall and wait for a few minutes for the game to be removed.

Larger Steam games will take a little longer to uninstall. It will show you an uninstalling message alongside the game title in your library until it’s complete. Once that is done, if you check disk space, it should show you’ve got more than you had before. Repeat the process if you want to free up even more space or simply remove a few more distractions from your Mac.

Or maybe you want to take this distraction purge one step further. Perhaps it’s time to remove Steam from your Mac entirely. There are two ways you can do this.

You might be wondering: can you uninstall Steam without losing games? The short answer is no. All of your games will remain in your Steam account and on your Mac, so this method won’t free up much space. However, it does mean you can re-download the app again when you are ready.

Removing every Steam game, the local files, and associated data means going through steps 1 to 6 again and then deleting the app from your Mac. 

Whichever option you choose, your games will stay in the Steam library, which is good for those who ask themselves, “If I uninstall Steam, what happens to my games?” They’re all still in the library, so if you want to download any of them and play again, you’ve not lost anything.

How to uninstall Steam games on Mac without Steam

If you have already said goodbye to Steam but have found some of Steam games on your Mac, you can delete those, too. Removing Steam games is much easier with a special Uninstaller tool that comes with CleanMyMac. With its help, you can uninstall Steam games in a few clicks, regardless of whether you have Steam installed on your Mac or not. Just follow these steps:

  1. Download CleanMyMac for free and open the app.
  2. Go to the Applications > Scan > Manage My Applications > Uninstaller.
  3. Select the games you want to delete and click Uninstall.
All apps selected in the Uninstaller module of CMM

You can also delete Steam using CleanMyMac ’s Uninstaller.

Say you’ve deleted unneeded Steam games and even cleared out your entire Steam library, and you still need more space. This storage issue could be a sign that your Mac needs a cleanup.

CleanMyMac will help you with that. Just click the Scan button in the Cleanup module, and the app will find all useless files you can safely remove. Most Mac users find over 74GB of junk when they run the program. Your Mac will run faster, too, so you can enjoy an enhanced gaming experience.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned!