Uninstall and recover by hand

A move MakeRoom made leaves two things behind: a shortcut where the folder was, and the folder itself on the drive. Both are ordinary filesystem objects you can inspect and undo with readlink, ditto and mv.

What MakeRoom keeps, and where

• ~/Library/Application Support/makeroom/: one SQLite database, the whole of MakeRoom's memory — past scans, the operation ledger, your saved routines, the folders you told it to leave alone, your preferences, your key, and the date this install started counting its trial. Removing it resets the app to a fresh install. Safe if you have only scanned and cleaned. It strands anything you have moved to a drive, because nothing will remember where each folder came from.
• /Volumes/<drive>/MakeRoom/: the folders MakeRoom moved off this Mac, laid out the way they were here. MakeRoom/Home/… mirrors your home directory. This is your data. MakeRoom never removes it except during a verified restore.
• The original path of a moved folder: a symlink pointing at the copy on the drive.
• The Trash: anything cleanup moved. Empty it when you want the space.

MakeRoom stores nothing outside these places. A failure is written to a local log inside that same directory, with [REDACTED] in place of every path, and it is sent nowhere.

Before you remove that directory, if you have ever added a key

Your key lives in it. MakeRoom holds no account and makes no request, so there is nothing for a reinstalled copy to fetch: the copies of your key are the file you downloaded and the one in that database. Keep that file, or download it again from the portal, before you remove the directory. If you have lost both, the portal hands this Mac's key over again — signed in, from that Mac's card, for as long as its term is running. It costs nothing.

Removing the directory also restarts the 14-day trial of moving, because the date this install started counting is in there and nowhere else. That is a consequence rather than an invitation: MakeRoom keeps nothing hidden outside its one directory, and putting a counter somewhere you could not find it would be the worse trade.

Uninstalling

If you have never moved anything to a drive

1. Quit MakeRoom.
2. Drag MakeRoom.app to the Trash.
3. Keep the key file you were emailed, or download it again from the portal — it is in that directory and nowhere else on this Mac.
4. Optionally remove ~/Library/Application Support/makeroom/ to forget past scans.
5. Optionally remove MakeRoom from System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access.

Nothing is at risk. Scans are a cache of a walk that can be repeated.

If you have moved anything to a drive

1. Open MakeRoom → Externalized and read the list. Every row is a folder on a drive with a shortcut where it used to be.
2. Bring back anything you want on this Mac with Bring Back to Mac, with the drive connected.
3. For anything you want to leave on the drive, note the row's source and destination. After the next step nothing will remember the pairing.

Only then remove the app and its state directory. The copies on your drives stay readable through their shortcuts either way.

Reversing a move by hand

You need this only if MakeRoom cannot run or its database is gone. Say the folder was ~/.ollama/models.

# 1. Where did it go? The shortcut answers in one line.
readlink ~/.ollama/models
# → /Volumes/Samsung T7/MakeRoom/Home/.ollama/models

# 2. Copy it back beside itself, preserving metadata. Delete nothing yet.
ditto "/Volumes/Samsung T7/MakeRoom/Home/.ollama/models" ~/.ollama/models.restored

# 3. Check the copy before trusting it.
diff -r "/Volumes/Samsung T7/MakeRoom/Home/.ollama/models" ~/.ollama/models.restored && echo identical

# 4. Only now remove the shortcut. rm, never rm -r. If it is not a link, stop and look.
rm ~/.ollama/models

# 5. Put the folder back.
mv ~/.ollama/models.restored ~/.ollama/models

# 6. Last of all, once you are satisfied, remove the drive's copy.
rm -rf "/Volumes/Samsung T7/MakeRoom/Home/.ollama/models"

The order matters and it is the same order MakeRoom uses: copy, verify, replace the link, and only then remove the copy on the drive. At every step a complete copy exists somewhere.

If the shortcut points somewhere that no longer exists

macOS sometimes mounts a drive of the same name at a new path, such as /Volumes/Samsung T7 1. MakeRoom repairs this itself, because it identifies drives by UUID. By hand, find the folder under MakeRoom/ on the attached drive and recreate the link:

rm ~/.ollama/models
ln -s "/Volumes/Samsung T7 1/MakeRoom/Home/.ollama/models" ~/.ollama/models

After a crash

MakeRoom settles interrupted work at the next launch, before anything new can start, and it never resolves an ambiguous state by deleting a candidate. An interrupted move leaves a sibling folder next to the original path named <name>.makeroom-backup-<id>. That is your data, complete. Moving it back over the original path is exactly what MakeRoom would have done.