Being sixth in line among the most popular browsing apps, Opera is being used as the main web browser by a lot of web users all around the world. Many people prefer this browser over Safari, Chrome, or Firefox on their Mac computers for a number of reasons. Maybe you have downloaded Opera because you wanted to give it a try, or someone suggested it to you.

However, if you don’t use this browser that often or you are having some issues with it, you may want to uninstall it. Dragging the Opera browser to the Trash, though, would not fully remove it from your Mac. You will need to manually find erase all of the files that the program has placed on your system. But how to do that? This is what we will explain in the next lines.

How to Uninstall Opera from Mac?

To ensure the smooth removal of the browser, make sure that you quit Opera if it is operating and end any processes that are related to it. This can be done from the Activity Monitor app that is found in Applications>Utilities>Activity Monitor. Once you launch the app, go to the Processes tab, and find all the processes that have “Opera” in their name. Select each of these processes and then click on the Quit Process button that is found in the toolbar. Then, close the Activity Monitor.

Next, go to the Applications folder, find the Opera app, and drag it to the Trash. Empty the Trash bin after that.

This is not everything, though. Once you have done that, you need to find and delete all the files placed by Opera on your startup drive.

1. In your Finder, select the Go menu and pick “Go to Folder”. In the text box that appears, type this: ~/Library/Caches

2. Then, find this folder: com.operasoftware.Opera and move it to the Trash. Empty the Trash bin at the end.

Reset Opera on Mac

Many users who face some issues with Opera typically go for the uninstall option. However, this isn’t always necessary because, sometimes, a simple reset may solve the issues, and here is how to do it:

1.Open Opera and click on the main menu icon at the top right corner of the window.

2.Then, navigate to Settings>Advanced>Privacy & Security.

3.Scroll down and find the option “Restore settings to their original defaults”.

4.Select the option, confirm the prompts that pop-up on your screen and click on Reset.

An Opera reset may remove some of the customized settings and your preferences, but it will leave you with a browser that behaves as if it has just been installed. You can always go back to the instructions above and uninstall the app if that doesn’t help to improve its performance issues.

Aside from uninstalling or resetting the browser, you may erase some files that collect user data such as cookies and cache files. This can be done quickly from the Preferences menu of the browser.