How do I remove GPSLarp from my Mac completely?
You want it gone, and you would like to know that gone actually means gone rather than an application icon in the Trash and a scattering of things you cannot find.
Two things exist on your Mac and that is the entire list: the application, and one folder in your Library. Do the two things in section 01 first, in that order — one of them cannot be undone afterwards.
01Two things to do first
Neither takes long, and both are irreversible in the sense that matters: once the app is gone, one of them is inconvenient and the other is impossible.
01Stop any location you have set
Do this before you quit and delete the app. The override lasts only while GPSLarp holds the connection, so stopping is the clean way to hand the phone back its real position while you still have the control that does it. How do I put my real location back? has all three ways, including the one that still works when a session has lapsed.
02Export your data, if you are also deleting the account
Deleting an account and removing the app are separate acts, and only one of them is on this page. But if you intend to do both, export first: there is no export afterwards. The controls for both are on your account page and are described on How do I export or delete my data?
02The three things to remove
01The application
Quit GPSLarp, then drag /Applications/GPSLarp.app to the Trash. Quitting it also stops the background service it started, so nothing is left running once the window is closed.
02The folder in your Library
Delete ~/Library/Application Support/GPSLarp/. Removing the application does not remove this folder, and removing this folder is what makes it a clean uninstall rather than a tidy Applications folder.
What is in it:
- locations.json — the places you saved. This is the only thing in the folder you might actually want to keep; copy it somewhere first if so. See saved locations.
- session.json — your saved sign-in, so the app does not ask every time you open it. It is here, not in the keychain.
- entitlement.json — a copy of a paid subscription, so that the app works where there is no signal. It holds nothing about the free runs; those are counted on the server.
- install-id.txt, ui-state.json and a couple of others the app keeps for itself — an identifier for this installation, which panels you had open, and a scratch route file.
- tunneld.log — what the connection wrote the last time it started, and nothing else.
- usage.json, on a Mac that ran an older version. It used to hold a local count of your free runs. Nothing reads it any more — the grant is counted against your account on the server — so deleting it changes nothing except the size of the folder. See what you get without paying.
To get there in Finder, hold Option and use the Go menu to open your Library folder, then Application Support, then GPSLarp.
There is no third step, and no keychain item
Your saved sign-in is a file inside the folder above — session.json, readable only by you — rather than an entry in the macOS keychain. So deleting that folder removes it, and there is nothing to look for in Keychain Access. An earlier version of this page sent people there; it was wrong, and searching for GPSLarp in the keychain will simply find nothing.
03What was never installed
The reason the list above is short is that the installer puts nothing anywhere else, and it says so on its own final screen. There is no background service, no login item, no system extension, no privileged helper and no kernel extension — nothing that survives quitting the app, and nothing that needs undoing.
That was a deliberate decision rather than a gap. It is also the reason the app asks for an administrator password each session instead of once forever: the alternative was installing something that kept those rights, and that something would then be on this page.
04Nothing to uninstall on the iPhone
No profile in Settings, no app, no jailbreak. A few Apple settings may remain if you created them, and what GPSLarp changes on your iPhone covers all of them and how to reverse each — it is the page for that question and this one does not repeat it.
The one thing to do on the phone before you finish is put your real location back, which is section 01 above and is the whole of it.
05What removing the app does not do
Two things people expect it to do, and it does neither. Both are worth knowing before you assume they are handled.
- It does not stop a subscription. Deleting an application and stopping a recurring charge are unrelated acts, and the app is not where a subscription is managed from. That is done from your account page — see How do I cancel my subscription? If you want both, do that one too.
- It does not delete your account or the data held about you. Those live on the account and are removed from the account page, described on How do I export or delete my data?
Reinstalling does not reset the free run of each mode
The free run of each mode is counted against your account, not against the Mac. So removing GPSLarp and installing it again does not give it back, and nothing in the three steps above changes that. What do I get without paying? has what the grant actually is.
06If that did not work
The Trash will not empty because GPSLarp is in use. The app is still running, or the background service it started has not stopped yet. Quit the app properly rather than closing its window, and if the Mac insists, restarting it releases everything either way.
You cannot find the Library folder. It is hidden by default. In Finder, open the Go menu and hold Option — a Library entry appears in the list while the key is held.
You have used GPSLarp for a very long time. Older versions kept saved locations and the owner licence in a folder called GPSLarp directly in your home folder, before there was a proper application-support location. The current app only ever reads that folder, never writes to it, so it will not exist unless you have had this installed since then. Look for it; delete it if it is there; do not worry if it is not.
You are searching for other files and finding none. That is the expected result. If a search turns up something naming GPSLarp outside the three places above, it did not come from the installer — read it before deleting it.
The honest limit of this page: it lists what this application and its installer put on a Mac, read off the project itself. It cannot tell you what something else on your machine may have done with a file you exported, or what a backup has already copied elsewhere.