How do I uninstall Dropbox?

Question

After booting up, a popup screen tells me Dropbox did not install correctly, but it is lurking somewhere. To install properly I first have to delete the incorrect install. How can I do that?

I'm using the latest version of Ubuntu.

Solution 1

This is from Dropbox help page:

dropbox stop
dropbox status  # Should report "not running"
rm -rf ~/.dropbox-dist
rm -rf /var/lib/dropbox
rm -rf ~/.dropbox*
sudo apt-get remove nautilus-dropbox
sudo apt-get remove dropbox
rm /etc/apt/source.d/dropbox

Solution 2

Try this command in a terminal:

sudo apt-get remove --purge nautilus-dropbox

Solution 3

Based on this link you can follow this steps:

dropbox stop
dropbox status  # Should report "not running"

rm -rf ~/.dropbox-dist
rm -rf /var/lib/dropbox
rm -rf ~/.dropbox*
sudo apt-get remove nautilus-dropbox
sudo apt-get remove dropbox
rm /etc/apt/source.d/dropbox

And if you want to delete the files that were synced, you can run this command:

rm -rv ~/Dropbox

Solution 4

You can remove a package through apt-get:

sudo apt-get remove dropbox

Solution 5

It works like this:

1. sudo dpkg --configure -a
2. Press Ctrl+C to before the download of Dropbox tries to do anything.
3. Remove dropbox with sudo apt-get purge nautilus-dropbox

View more solutions

Comments

[endolith]

Package 'dropbox' is not installed, so not removed

[Alvar]

why would this work better than just running sudo apt-get purge nautilus-dropbox?

[Nasz Njoka Sr.]

because once the package is broken you can not use apt/dpkg for nothing other than fixing the package... in my case it still throw sudo apt-get remove --purge nautilus-dropbox

[VDarricau]

Don't forget rm -rvf ~/.dropbox ~/.dropbox-dist; rm -rv ~/Dropbox to remove all settings made and the last Dropbox folder.

[josephwb]

Unexpectedly, the commands listed here deleted Dropbox folders "in the cloud". i.e., I have Dropbox working well under different OSs, but running these commands deleted folders completely (rather than just from the current OS). I tried performing this on linux, but notice the result from Mac.

[Fons MA]

as of August 2020, after running the sudo apt-get remove commands I also get the message Package 'dropbox' is not installed, so not removed; but if I type dropbox I get the Dropbox command-line interface and a list of commands to use.