Uninstallation

Quick Uninstall

To uninstall Needle from your system, run:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/UIC-InDeXLab/Needle/main/scripts/uninstall.sh | bash

Or if you have the repository cloned:

./scripts/uninstall.sh

What Gets Removed

By default, the uninstallation script removes:

• The Needle desktop app (/Applications/Needle.app on macOS; the installed package on Linux and Windows)

Your indexed data is kept by default. It lives in:

• ~/Library/Application Support/com.needle.app — macOS
• ~/.local/share/com.needle.app — Linux
• %APPDATA%\com.needle.app — Windows
• ~/.cache/huggingface — downloaded model weights (several GB, shared with other Hugging Face tools)

Complete Cleanup

To also remove indexed data, vectors, saved credentials, and Needle’s cached models, run with --purge:

./scripts/uninstall.sh --purge

Only Needle’s own entries are removed from the HuggingFace cache, since that directory is shared with other tools that may rely on it.

Manual Cleanup

If you prefer to remove things by hand:

# Remove the app
rm -rf /Applications/Needle.app            # macOS
sudo apt remove needle                     # Linux (.deb)
sudo dnf remove needle                     # Linux (.rpm)

# Remove all user data (optional)
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/com.needle.app   # macOS
rm -rf ~/.local/share/com.needle.app                   # Linux

# Remove downloaded models (optional, several GB)
rm -rf ~/.cache/huggingface

On Windows, uninstall Needle from Settings → Apps, then optionally delete %APPDATA%\com.needle.app and %USERPROFILE%\.cache\huggingface.

Deleting only the data directory (and keeping the Hugging Face cache) resets Needle to a first run without re-downloading several gigabytes of models.