Uninstalling Tailscale

Here’s how to uninstall Tailscale from your device, or completely reset Tailscale for debugging purposes.

Windows

Tailscale for Windows can be uninstalled like any Windows app, by using the Windows Control Panel. Go to Settings > Apps, find Tailscale, and press the Uninstall button.

If you’d like to completely delete Tailscale, destroying any state or local information, you can also remove the files at the following paths:

C:\ProgramData\Tailscale
C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Tailscale
C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile\AppData\Local\Tailscale

The path under System32 was only used in older versions of the Tailscale client and may not be present on your system.

After uninstalling Tailscale, if you install Tailscale on a device again at a later time, it will have a new IP address.

macOS

Tailscale is a standard Mac App Store app, and can be easily uninstalled from Launchpad.

If you’d like to completely delete Tailscale, destroying any state or local information, you can also take the following steps:

  1. Remove the files at the following paths:

    ~/Library/Containers/io.tailscale.ipn.macos
    ~/Library/Containers/io.tailscale.ipn.macos.login-item-helper
    ~/Library/Containers/io.tailscale.ipn.macos.network-extension
    ~/Library/Containers/io.tailscale.ipn.macos.share-extension
    
  2. macOS 13.0 or later: Open System Settings > Network > VPN. Look for Tailscale Tunnel in the list of services. If it’s there, click the circled i and then click the Remove Configuration button . Be sure to apply your changes.

    Previous macOS versions: Open System Preferences > Network. Look for Tailscale Tunnel in the list of services. If it’s there, remove it by selecting it and pressing the - button at the bottom. Be sure to apply your changes.

  3. Open Keychain Access and search for “tailscale”, and delete any entries you see. This includes tailscale-machinekey, tailscale-logdata and tailscale-preferences.

After taking these steps, if you install Tailscale on this device again at a later time, it will have a new IP address.

macOS (Standalone)

The standalone version of Tailscale can be uninstalled by dragging its icon to the Trash and confirming that the system extension will also be removed.

If you’d like to completely delete Tailscale, destroying any state or local information, you can also take the following steps:

  1. Remove the files at the following paths:

    ~/Library/Containers/io.tailscale.ipn.macsys
    ~/Library/Containers/io.tailscale.ipn.macsys.login-item-helper
    ~/Library/Containers/io.tailscale.ipn.macsys.share-extension
    
  2. macOS 13.0 or later: Open System Settings > Network > VPN. Look for Tailscale Tunnel in the list of services. If it’s there, click the circled i and then click the Remove Configuration button . Be sure to apply your changes.

    Previous macOS versions: Open System Preferences > Network. Look for Tailscale Tunnel in the list of services. If it’s there, remove it by selecting it and pressing the - button at the bottom. Be sure to apply your changes.

  3. Remove Tailscale data files. They are owned the root user and their removal requires the use of the sudo command:

     sudo rm -rf /Library/Tailscale/
    

After taking these steps, if you install Tailscale on this device again at a later time, it will have a new IP address.

iOS

Uninstall Tailscale as you would any iOS app. No extra steps are needed.

Android

Uninstall Tailscale as you would any Android app. No extra steps are needed.

Linux

Uninstall Tailscale by using the uninstall command of the package manager you used to install the binary in the first place:

For all Ubuntu and Debian versions, uninstall using apt-get:

sudo apt-get remove tailscale

For CentOS 7 and Amazon Linux 2, uninstall using yum:

sudo yum remove tailscale

For openSUSE Leap 15.1, 15.2, and openSUSE Tumbleweed, uninstall using zypper:

sudo zypper rm tailscale

For CentOS 8, CentOS Stream 9, RHEL 8, and Fedora, uninstall using dnf:

sudo dnf remove tailscale

Completely delete Tailscale

If you’d like to completely delete Tailscale, destroying any state or local information, you can also remove the file at:

/var/lib/tailscale/tailscaled.state

After uninstalling Tailscale, if you install Tailscale on a device again at a later time, it will have a new IP address.

Synology NAS
  1. Uninstall Tailscale from Synology package center.
  2. Delete Synology node from Tailscale admin console.
  3. Remove the files at the following paths:
    /var/packages/Tailscale/var/*
    /var/packages/Tailscale/etc/*
    

After uninstalling Tailscale, if you install Tailscale on a device again at a later time, it will have a new IP address.