Moving & uninstalling

Move to a different Mac

The license step is described in Activation. This page covers moving your data along with it.

1. On the old Mac: stop Fregata

From the tray: Stop Frigate, then Quit Fregata. This makes sure no MP4 is half-written when you copy.

2. Copy the data

The two folders that matter are ~/Fregata/config/ (small) and ~/Fregata/media/ (big). Everything else is regenerated.

# A tarball is the safest copy method — preserves timestamps and
# avoids macOS extended-attribute weirdness.
tar -czf ~/Desktop/fregata-config.tar.gz -C ~ Fregata/config
tar -czf /Volumes/External/fregata-media.tar.gz -C ~ Fregata/media

If your media is huge, rsync to an external drive over USB or Thunderbolt is the path of least resistance:

rsync -aH --info=progress2 ~/Fregata/media/ /Volumes/External/Fregata/media/

3. On the new Mac: install Fregata, then restore data

1. Install the app per Installation.
2. Launch it. Go through the welcome wizard. Pick the same folder paths you had on the old Mac (or pick new ones — see below).
3. Quit Fregata.
4. Copy / extract your data into the chosen paths.
5. Launch Fregata again. The web UI will re-index the recordings on first start; this can take a few minutes for a large library.

If you’re using new folder paths (e.g. moved from a small SSD to a big external), set those in the welcome wizard and the launcher will write them into the UserDefaults. No paths in config.yml change.

4. Release the old Mac, activate the new

fregata.app/manage-license, sign in, Release from this Mac on the old binding, then activate on the new Mac with the same email and key.

Caution

Don’t release the license before you’ve finished copying the data. The release is reversible (you can re-bind the old Mac if you change your mind), but it’s an extra step.

Uninstall

Removing Fregata cleanly takes three steps. The app is not Mac App Store-distributed, so there’s no single uninstall surface — but everything Fregata writes lives in well-known places.

1. Quit and unregister Login Items

From the tray: Settings → Launch at Login (toggle off if it’s on), then Quit Fregata.

2. Delete the app

Drag /Applications/Fregata.app to the Trash and empty.

3. Delete data and settings

# All Fregata data — recordings, config, cache, logs.
rm -rf ~/Fregata

# UserDefaults (folder paths, env-var overrides, etc.).
defaults delete com.fregata.app
rm -f ~/Library/Preferences/com.fregata.app.plist

# Saved log directories outside ~/Fregata/, if any.
rm -rf ~/Library/Logs/Fregata 2>/dev/null

# The license token in the Keychain.
security delete-generic-password -s 'com.fregata.app' 2>/dev/null

The Keychain entry is what binds the license to this Mac. Removing it without first releasing the binding via the management page leaves the license “stuck” on this hardware ID. If you’re going to reinstall, you can ignore this; the activate-with-force flow handles it. If you’re uninstalling for good, release the license first (so it’s available for whoever picks up the Mac next).

4. (Optional) release the license

fregata.app/manage-license, sign in, Release from this Mac. Required if you plan to use the license on a different machine; nothing breaks if you skip it.

What you’re not deleting

These are not removed by the steps above, on purpose:

• Recordings on external drives you pointed Fregata at. The data doesn’t disappear because the app does.
• MQTT topic state on your broker. Whatever was retained when Fregata last published is still there. Restart your broker or publish empty retained messages if you want a clean slate.
• Home Assistant entities from the Frigate HACS integration. Disable / remove the integration in HA separately.