Leaving nebelhaus

nebelhaus is opinionated, not possessive.

You can remove one room, return to an earlier generation, uninstall the macOS system layer, or remove Nix entirely. These are different operations of very different sizes. Start with the smallest one that solves the problem.

Before changing anything, keep your config

~/.config/nix is your machine-specific configuration, not disposable generated state. Archive it before you remove anything:

cp -R ~/.config/nix ~/.config/nix.nebelhaus-archive

A git remote is better if the config contains no secrets. Either way, inspect it before sharing or backing it up somewhere public — Making it yours covers keeping secrets out of the repo, and the gitleaks hook that catches the ones you miss.

Choose your exit

What you want	Use this path
Undo the most recent rebuild	Roll back one generation
Stop using tiling, the bar, Pounce, or Hush	Remove one room
Remove the nix-darwin-managed system but keep Nix	Take down the system layer
Remove Nix itself	Remove Determinate Nix
Remove standalone Homebrew Pounce	Remove standalone Pounce

Roll back one generation

Every successful switch creates a generation. Return to the previous one with:

haus rollback

List the available generations or choose a specific one:

haus generations
haus rollback <generation-number>

Rollback restores Nix-managed packages, agents, shell configuration, and paths from that generation. See the haus CLI for the full command set.

It does not reliably restore every macOS preference changed by a prior activation. Dock, keyboard, Finder, menu-bar, wallpaper, Spotlight, file-association, and similar settings may need to be changed back in System Settings, or declared with the values you want in your config.

Remove one room

The visible rooms can be disabled independently in your host file:

haus edit

{
  nebelhaus.prowl.enable = false;
  nebelhaus.sill.enable = false;
  nebelhaus.pounce.enable = false;
  nebelhaus.hush.enable = false;
}

Apply the change:

haus rebuild

This keeps the base nebelhaus system and your Nix configuration. It only disables the selected rooms:

• prowl — AeroSpace tiling, Caps-Lock launcher, and window-management bindings
• sill — SketchyBar and the custom top bar
• pounce — the Pounce daemon, palette hotkey, and Accessibility-dependent features
• hush — the Hush CLI, palette command, and status item

After rebuilding, verify the macOS controls those rooms used — especially Caps Lock, the native menu bar, Spotlight’s shortcut, and Accessibility permissions — are set the way you want. See nebelhaus.* options for what each toggle governs.

Take down the system layer

This removes nix-darwin’s system integration while leaving the Nix installation available for other projects.

Run nix-darwin’s current uninstaller:

sudo nix --extra-experimental-features "nix-command flakes" \
  run nix-darwin#darwin-uninstaller

If that cannot run, try the locally installed copy:

sudo darwin-uninstaller

Read the plan before confirming. The uninstaller is expected to remove nix-darwin-managed system links, static files, and launchd services, then restore the underlying Nix daemon supplied by the installer.

Restart the Mac after it completes. A restart is not a personality flaw.

Keep or archive your config

The uninstaller does not make ~/.config/nix useless. Keep it if you might return, move it out of the active path, or delete it only after inspecting it.

A reversible archive:

mv ~/.config/nix ~/.config/nix.nebelhaus-archive

Restore replaced dotfiles

nebelhaus configures Home Manager to preserve a conflicting file with the suffix .backup before replacing it.

Common examples include:

~/.zshrc.backup
~/.zshenv.backup
~/.config/starship.toml.backup
~/.config/git/config.backup

There may also be backups inside managed configuration directories. Find them before restoring anything:

find "$HOME" -maxdepth 5 -name '*.backup' -print

Inspect each backup, confirm the Nix-managed target is gone, then move it back manually. For example:

ls -l ~/.zshrc ~/.zshrc.backup
mv ~/.zshrc.backup ~/.zshrc

Caution

Do not overwrite a new file blindly. The backup belongs to the version that existed at the first conflict, which may not be the version you want today.

Homebrew applications

By default, nebelhaus uses Homebrew cleanup mode none. It does not remove apps simply because they are absent from the current configuration.

Review the packages declared in your archived host file and compare them with what Homebrew currently owns:

brew list --formula
brew list --cask

Remove only the applications you no longer want:

brew uninstall <formula>
brew uninstall --cask <cask>

Use --zap only when you also intend to remove the application’s related data:

brew uninstall --cask --zap <cask>

nebelhaus deliberately does not guess which applications are still yours. That would be an exciting policy in all the wrong ways.

Remove standalone Pounce

This section is for Pounce installed directly through Homebrew, not Pounce managed as a nebelhaus room. (Removing the room is just nebelhaus.pounce.enable = false; above.)

Stop its service, uninstall it, and optionally remove the tap if you use nothing else from it:

brew services stop pounce
brew uninstall pounce
brew untap nebelhaus/tap

Your personal commands and configuration live under ~/.config/pounce. Keep them, archive them, or remove them separately after inspection:

mv ~/.config/pounce ~/.config/pounce.archive

Then open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility and remove or disable Pounce if it remains listed.

Remove Determinate Nix

Danger

Only do this after removing nix-darwin. Removing Nix affects every Nix-managed project and tool on the Mac, not only nebelhaus.

The Determinate installer provides its own uninstaller:

sudo /nix/nix-installer uninstall

Read the uninstall plan before confirming. When it finishes, restart the Mac.

If the command fails, stop and use Determinate’s current macOS uninstall troubleshooting guide rather than manually deleting random pieces of /nix.

macOS settings to verify

Nix generations and uninstallers cannot promise to reconstruct every preference that existed before installation. Check these after leaving:

• Dock autohide and orientation
• key repeat and press-and-hold behaviour
• Finder extensions, hidden files, path bar, status bar, and view style
• native menu-bar visibility
• Caps Lock behaviour
• Spotlight’s ⌘Space shortcut
• wallpaper
• file associations, if nebelhaus.hearth.hijackFileAssociations was enabled
• Pounce Accessibility access
• Touch ID for sudo

The bootstrap attempts to create a local APFS snapshot before installation. Treat restoring that snapshot as a coarse recovery operation: it may also revert unrelated changes made after the snapshot. Prefer targeted restoration unless the machine genuinely needs the wider rewind.

Verify the house is down

After restarting, check the pieces relevant to the path you chose:

command -v haus || echo "haus is no longer on PATH"
command -v darwin-rebuild || echo "darwin-rebuild is no longer on PATH"
brew services list | grep -i pounce || true
launchctl list | grep -Ei 'nebelhaus|pounce|aerospace|sketchybar' || true

A matching AeroSpace or SketchyBar process is not automatically residue; you may have installed it independently. The question is whether nebelhaus still manages it.

If you removed Nix entirely:

command -v nix || echo "nix is no longer on PATH"
test ! -e /nix && echo "/nix is gone"

Report an incomplete departure

A departure bug is a launch blocker. Open an issue on github.com/nebelhaus with:

• Mac model and macOS version
• whether Nix existed before nebelhaus
• the removal path you followed
• the exact command and output
• what remained afterward
• relevant screenshots or logs, with secrets and identity information removed

Caution

Do not include tokens, private keys, secret values, or unredacted personal files in an issue.