Removing a Steam game from your Mac library takes about three clicks, but the game itself is rarely the whole story. Knowing how to handle uninstall steam game mac leftover files—the caches, shader bundles, save-game folders, and workshop downloads that Steam leaves scattered across your home directory—is what separates freeing up a few hundred megabytes from reclaiming the full ten or twenty gigabytes a modern title can consume. This guide covers every folder you need to check, on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs running macOS Sequoia or Tahoe.
Why Steam Leaves Files Behind After Uninstalling a Game
Steam's built-in uninstaller removes only what lives inside the game's steamapps/common folder. Anything the game wrote outside that directory—shader caches, cloud-synced save data, redistributable libraries, and macOS-specific support files—stays on disk. Steam deliberately keeps save data so you can reinstall without losing progress, but caches and shader bundles have no such excuse. They can be safely deleted.
A single AAA title can leave behind three to five distinct cache locations plus redistributable frameworks that add up to several gigabytes on their own.
Step 1 — Uninstall the Game Through Steam
Before hunting for leftovers, remove the game's core files through Steam so the client updates its own manifest:
- Open Steam and go to your Library.
- Right-click the game title and choose Manage > Uninstall.
- Confirm the dialog. Steam deletes the contents of
~/Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps/common/<GameName>/. - Wait for the progress bar to finish before proceeding.
If you have Steam installed in a custom library folder, the steamapps/common path will mirror that location instead of the default one inside ~/Library/Application Support/Steam/.
Where Steam and Its Games Store Files on macOS
The table below maps every meaningful location Steam writes to outside of the steamapps folder itself:
| Location | What Lives There | Typical Size | Safe to Delete? |
|---|---|---|---|
~/Library/Application Support/Steam/ |
Steam client data, steamapps folder, userdata | Varies (bulk is game files) | Only per-game subfolders |
~/Library/Application Support/Steam/userdata/<steamid>/<appid>/ |
Local save games and Steam Cloud sync cache | 1 MB – 200 MB | Yes, if you no longer need saves |
~/Library/Caches/com.valvesoftware.steam/ |
Steam client UI cache, web views | 100 MB – 500 MB | Yes |
~/Library/Caches/<game-bundle-id>/ |
Game-specific caches (varies by title) | 50 MB – 2 GB | Yes |
~/Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps/workshop/content/<appid>/ |
Downloaded Workshop mods and maps | 100 MB – 20 GB | Yes |
~/Library/Logs/ |
Steam crash logs and game diagnostic logs | 1 MB – 50 MB | Yes |
~/Library/Preferences/ |
Preference plists (e.g., com.valvesoftware.steam.plist) |
Negligible | Yes, after uninstalling Steam entirely |
How to Manually Remove Steam Game Leftover Files
Once the core game is uninstalled, work through each folder below. Open Finder, press Cmd + Shift + G, and paste the path to jump directly to it.
Delete the game's userdata folder
Steam stores local save data keyed to your numeric Steam ID. Find your Steam ID at Steam > Account Details; it appears as a 17-digit number. Then delete the matching subfolder:
~/Library/Application Support/Steam/userdata/<your-steam-id>/<game-app-id>/
You can look up an App ID by right-clicking the game in your library and selecting Properties; it appears in the URL bar of the store page or in the Updates tab.
Clear game caches from ~/Library/Caches
Navigate to ~/Library/Caches/ and look for any folder whose name matches the game publisher, game title, or a bundle identifier pattern like com.publisher.gamename. Some common offenders:
~/Library/Caches/com.valvesoftware.steam/— Steam client cache (safe to clear entirely)~/Library/Caches/unity.<publisher>.<GameName>/— Unity engine shader and asset cache~/Library/Caches/com.epicgames.<GameName>/— games that also have an Epic launcher component
Remove Workshop content
If you subscribed to mods or maps through the Steam Workshop, they are stored separately and survive a game uninstall:
~/Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps/workshop/content/<appid>/
Delete the entire <appid> subfolder to recover this space.
Check Application Support for game-specific folders
Many games write support files directly into ~/Library/Application Support/ under the game's own name, completely separate from the Steam folder:
~/Library/Application Support/<GameName>/~/Library/Application Support/<Publisher>/<GameName>/
These folders often hold configuration files, additional asset caches, and local backup saves. Removing them is safe once you are certain you will not reinstall the title.
Shader Pre-Compilation Caches: A Hidden Space Consumer
macOS Sequoia and Tahoe use Metal as the GPU API, and many games pre-compile shaders the first time you launch them. These compiled shader caches can sit in:
~/Library/Caches/under a game-specific bundle ID/var/folders/in per-user temporary directories managed by macOS (these are purged automatically by the OS when storage pressure rises, so you do not need to chase them manually)
The ones under ~/Library/Caches are not auto-purged and are fair game to delete yourself.
Uninstalling Steam Entirely (Optional)
If you are done with Steam altogether, the client itself leaves behind more than just the app bundle. After dragging Steam.app to the Trash, also remove:
~/Library/Application Support/Steam/— the entire folder (contains all game files and user data)~/Library/Caches/com.valvesoftware.steam/~/Library/Logs/Steam/~/Library/Preferences/com.valvesoftware.steam.plist~/Library/Cookies/com.valvesoftware.steam.binarycookies
If you use Steam's cloud saves, your progress is backed up to Valve's servers and will restore automatically the next time you install a game—deleting local userdata folders does not affect cloud saves.
For a broader look at what is consuming space after you clean up games, the guide on what is taking up space on your Mac walks through every major category in macOS storage.
Automating the Hunt: Letting a Tool Do the Scanning
Tracking down cache folders, workshop leftovers, and app-support directories for a dozen uninstalled games is tedious and error-prone—it is easy to miss a folder or accidentally delete the wrong one. A tool like Crumb can audit all of these at once and show what's safe before you delete, grouping leftovers by their source app so you see at a glance what each game left behind.
If you have been accumulating Steam games for years, there is a good chance several gigabytes of orphaned files are sitting in ~/Library/Caches and ~/Library/Application Support from titles you uninstalled long ago. Running a scan before and after cleaning gives you a concrete measurement of the space recovered. The article on how to completely uninstall apps on Mac covers the same leftover-file pattern for non-Steam applications as well.
Quick Checklist Before You Finish
Run through this list after uninstalling any Steam game to make sure you have caught everything:
- Game core files removed via Steam > Manage > Uninstall
- Workshop content folder deleted for the app ID
- Userdata save folder reviewed and removed if saves are no longer needed
~/Library/Caches/checked for game-named subfolders~/Library/Application Support/checked for a standalone game folder outside the Steam directory- Steam client cache cleared if the client itself is behaving slowly