Very rarely, a Zoom issue might pop up where normal troubleshooting methods don't work. In that case, it might be fixed by fully clearing out the Zoom desktop application's data and starting fresh.
Windows 10/11
It's thankfully very easy to clear out Zoom's data on Windows devices. You just need to run CleanZoom, which is a more intense version of uninstalling the program. To do that, go to this article from Zoom and follow the instructions under Run CleanZoom to remove Zoom completely. This article includes a link to the zip file that contains the program, and a link to the area where you can reinstall the application afterwards.
MacOS
To get the level of data cleaning that CleanZoom does on Mac, you will need to copy-paste a couple of lines of code into your device. It sounds more complicated than it is; Below are the exact steps you need to take:
- Open Zoom client and quit from the Zoom menu (this is just to make sure the application is closed).
- Open Terminal from your Mac. This is an application on all Macs. You can find it in the same way you find any programs on your device; Below are the steps for opening it using the Spotlight Search.
- Copy-paste the following line into Terminal. We highly recommend copy-pasting over typing, so that you can be sure it's correct.
cd "Library/Application Support/zoom.us"
- Click Enter.
- Copy-paste the following line into Terminal:
rm -rf data
- Click Enter.
- Open your Zoom application. If needed, reinstall Zoom client: zoom.us/downloads