# Leaving (/docs/haus/leaving) haus has defaults, not demands. Rolling back a generation, switching off one room, removing the system layer and removing Nix are four operations of very different sizes. **Start with the smallest one that solves your problem.** `~/.config/nix` is *your* machine described in text, not generated state. Archive it first; a git remote is better, if it holds no secrets. ```sh cp -R ~/.config/nix ~/.config/nix.archive ``` ## Roll back a generation [#roll-back-a-generation] Every successful switch makes a generation, and stepping back to one takes seconds: ```sh haus generations # what you can go back to haus rollback # the previous one haus rollback # a specific one ``` That restores everything Nix wrote: packages, agents, shell config, paths. It does **not** touch macOS's own preferences, which a rebuild sets imperatively: the Dock, Finder, the keyboard, the menu bar, file associations. Those have their own pair of commands, and System Settings is the way back if you never captured a snapshot: ```sh haus capture # snapshot the live settings before a risky change haus revert-settings # write the snapshot's keys back over the live ones haus revert-settings list # every snapshot you've taken ``` **The wallpaper is the sharpest case.** The foundation leaves it alone, but hacker sets `haus.wallpaper.style` to `minimal`, so on that desktop the picture is stamped at every activation and macOS keeps no record of what was there before. Rolling back doesn't bring yours back: re-pick it in System Settings **and** set `haus.wallpaper.style = "none"`, or the next rebuild stamps over it again. ## Switch off a room [#switch-off-a-room] Every room comes out independently, and the rest of the machine keeps working: ```nix { haus.windows.enable = false; # AeroSpace tiling, the Caps-Lock leader, window bindings haus.bar.enable = false; # SketchyBar: the top bar, and the bottom one if you run it haus.launcher.enable = false; # the launcher daemon, ⌘Space, its Accessibility features haus.shelf.enable = false; # the notch file shelf, see the residue note below haus.focus.enable = false; # the quiet switch: its bar pill, palette command and CLI haus.security.touchId.enable = false; # Touch ID for sudo, back to the password prompt } ``` ```sh haus edit haus rebuild ``` The native menu bar comes back on its own: haus rewrites that key at every activation, so switching bar off is enough. Caps Lock comes back on the next **restart**: the remap is a `hidutil` property that lasts until you reboot, so the session you rebuilt in keeps it. **Spotlight's ⌘Space** never comes back on its own, because the launcher disables that shortcut with a one-way write; re-enable it in System Settings ▸ Keyboard ▸ Keyboard Shortcuts. The Focus room leaves the reverse trace: a Do Not Disturb chord bound onto a shortcut macOS ships disabled, which stays bound until you clear it. [Customize a desktop](/docs/haus/desktops/customizing#turning-rooms-off) has the full table, plus the middle ground where the tiler keeps working but gives your keys back. ## Take the whole thing off [#take-the-whole-thing-off] One verb, and it does the four steps below in the only order that works: ```sh haus uninstall # prints the plan, asks once haus uninstall --yes # skip the question ``` It prints what it is about to remove and what it is going to leave, then puts your macOS settings back from the snapshot the installer took, removes nix-darwin, removes every launchd agent haus wrote, removes Nix, and finally cleans up the dotfile links that have just gone dead. It leaves `~/.config/nix`, Homebrew and its casks, and your TCC grants, and it names each one with the command that removes it. Each step depends on the one before it. `haus revert-settings` has to run while haus is still installed, because it is about to be deleted with everything else. The Determinate uninstaller refuses to run at all while nix-darwin is installed. nix-darwin removes its two system daemons and leaves the agents in `~/Library/LaunchAgents` exactly where they are, so those have to go separately, or they come back at every login and respawn every ten seconds against a store that is gone. And a Home Manager symlink only reads as dead once Nix is removed, so the cleanup has to be last. The rest of this page is the same route by hand, one step at a time, for a machine where `haus` is already gone or where you want to stop part way. ## Take down the system layer [#take-down-the-system-layer] This removes nix-darwin's system integration and leaves Nix installed for everything else that uses it. Run nix-darwin's own uninstaller, falling back to the locally installed `sudo darwin-uninstaller` if that can't run: ```sh sudo nix --extra-experimental-features "nix-command flakes" \ run nix-darwin#darwin-uninstaller ``` **Read the plan before confirming.** It removes the managed system links, static files and launchd services, then restores the Nix daemon the installer supplied. "launchd services" there means the two *system* daemons. Everything haus runs in your login session stays in `~/Library/LaunchAgents`, still enabled, and once Nix is gone those point at nothing: SketchyBar, AeroSpace and Pounce come back at every login and respawn every ten seconds, forever. Take them out yourself: ```sh for p in ~/Library/LaunchAgents/*.plist; do grep -q -e /nix/store -e /run/current-system "$p" || continue label=$(basename "$p" .plist) launchctl bootout "gui/$UID/$label" 2>/dev/null rm -f "$p" done ``` `haus uninstall` does this for you, which is the reason it exists. Restart when it finishes. Your config isn't made useless by this: keep it if you might come back, or move it out of the active path with `mv ~/.config/nix ~/.config/nix.archive`. ### Put your own dotfiles back [#put-your-own-dotfiles-back] Home Manager preserves a conflicting file with a `.backup` suffix rather than clobbering it, so what you had before the install is usually still there: ```sh find "$HOME" -maxdepth 5 -name '*.backup' -print ``` Typically `~/.zshrc.backup`, `~/.zshenv.backup`, `~/.zprofile.backup`, `~/.profile.backup`, `~/.config/starship.toml.backup`, `~/.config/git/config.backup`, plus some inside managed directories. `~/.zprofile` is the one people forget, and where Homebrew's `shellenv` line usually lives. Inspect each, confirm the Nix-managed target is gone, then move it back by hand. Deal with `~/.profile` while haus is still installed. haus writes its own, guarded (an unguarded `. "$file"` naming a file that isn't there prints an error on every new terminal window), and it sources `~/.profile.local` if you have one. So anything your old `~/.profile` set (a PATH, a toolchain's `env`) belongs in `~/.profile.local` until you leave, and comes back with the rest afterwards. Don't restore blindly. A backup is the version that existed at the *first* conflict, which may be years older than what you'd want today. ### Apps stay yours [#apps-stay-yours] haus never removes an app just because it left your config: `haus.homebrew.cleanup` is `"none"`. Compare what you declared against what Homebrew owns, and remove only what you don't want: ```sh brew list --formula brew list --cask brew uninstall brew uninstall --cask # add --zap to take its data too ``` **Pounce installed on its own** is the opposite case. Dropping the launcher room is `haus.launcher.enable = false` above, but a copy you installed through Homebrew is yours to take off: [Remove it](/docs/pounce/install#remove-it) has the commands. ## Remove Determinate Nix [#remove-determinate-nix] Removing Nix affects **every** Nix-managed project and tool on the Mac, not just haus. The Determinate installer ships its own uninstaller. Read the plan before confirming, and restart when it's done: ```sh sudo /nix/nix-installer uninstall ``` If it fails, follow Determinate's current macOS uninstall guide rather than deleting pieces of `/nix` by hand. ## What to check afterwards [#what-to-check-afterwards] No uninstaller can reconstruct every preference that existed before an install. **`haus revert-settings` is the real answer, and you almost certainly have a snapshot to give it**: the installer takes one of the Dock, Finder and keyboard domains before the first switch, so the verb works without your ever having run `haus capture`. `haus revert-settings list` shows what is there. This list is for anything outside those three domains, and for an install old enough to predate the snapshot: * the Dock's autohide, position, size and animations * key repeat, press-and-hold, and the trackpad's tap-to-click and three-finger drag * Finder's extensions, hidden files, path bar and view style * hot corners * the native menu bar and its clock, and Caps Lock * Spotlight's ⌘Space, which never comes back on its own, and the Do Not Disturb chord focus bound, which stays bound * the wallpaper * where screenshots land and in what format, and the screen-lock delay * alert volume and the startup chime (that one is firmware, and survives a reinstall) * your keyboard input sources: haus declares them exhaustively, so layouts you never listed were switched off * the application firewall * file associations, if `haus.terminal.hijackFileAssociations` was on * the launcher's Accessibility grant, and Touch ID for `sudo`, including the passwordless-`sudo` rule for rebuilds, which is the one with a security consequence The installer also takes an APFS snapshot before it starts, but that one is a whole-volume restore from Recovery rather than a settings undo, and macOS purges local snapshots within about a day. Treat it as luck rather than a plan; the settings snapshot above is the one to reach for. Then confirm what's actually gone: ```sh command -v haus || echo "haus is no longer on PATH" command -v darwin-rebuild || echo "darwin-rebuild is no longer on PATH" launchctl list | grep -Ei 'hausfold|pounce|aerospace|sketchybar|bar|focus|sleepwatcher' ``` Keep that pattern wide: haus runs more agents than the obvious three, under three different label prefixes, and a narrower grep reports a clean machine while the bottom bar and the focus watcher are still loaded. A surviving AeroSpace or SketchyBar process isn't automatically residue: both are Homebrew installs haus only *launches*, so `brew uninstall` is what removes them. And nothing has a removal path for the shelf app an activation step copied into place, or for state written as the machine ran: ```sh ls ~/.local/state/haus ~/.local/state/pounce ~/.config/perch /Applications/Perch.app ``` ## If something stays behind [#if-something-stays-behind] A departure that doesn't complete is a bug worth reporting. [Open an issue](https://github.com/hausfold/haus/issues) with your Mac model and macOS version, whether Nix existed before haus, the path you followed, the exact command and its output, and what remained. Strip tokens, keys and personal files out of anything you paste.