Subscribe to 💌 Tiny Improvements, my weekly newsletter for product builders. It's a single, tiny idea to help you build better products.

Quick tip: Here's how to uninstall Postgres from your Mac

Uninstalling Postgres database software from a computer running MacOS isn't super straightforward - this is what I found helpful.

The Problem

Earlier tonight, my Macbook Pro decided it was done having disk space, and in the middle of a Time Machine backup, it started gnawing through every last bit of free space I had left.  Great.

In a frenzy of panic-and-uninstall, I came across an install of Postgres 9.x which I haven't used in quite a long time.   I wanted to carefully uninstall it, in part because I knew that the Postgres install process does loads of not-easy-to-clean things to your mac, including adding a user account to your device, and an app, and a bunch of settings.

My goodness, what a ride.

The Solution

There's not a simple uninstaller for everything, so far as I can tell.

Eventually, the gods of web search brought me to this beautiful gist on GitHub, which listed everything I needed to do to complete the uninstall safely. (I've also forked the gist, in case the original ever disappears 😅).

I don't want to take any credit for the work - it seems to have originally come from this blog post from 2013, which was not returned by my Bing-fu (yeah, you read that right).  

I'm posting it here in the hopes that will help some other soul in the future who is going through this experience.  Good luck out there!

Hero
Quick tip: Here's how to uninstall Postgres from your Mac

Uninstalling Postgres database software from a computer running MacOS isn't super straightforward - this is what I found helpful.

dev
***

SHIP PRODUCTS
THAT MATTER

💌 Tiny Improvements: my weekly newsletter sharing one small yet impactful idea for product builders, startup founders, and indiehackers.

It's your cheat code for building products your customers will love. Learn from the CTO of a Y Combinator-backed startup, with past experience at Google, Stripe, and Microsoft.

    Join the other product builders, and start shipping today!