How do I uninstall Visual Studio Code?

Question

I installed Visual Studio Code a while ago, and I'm now trying to remove it. I don't remember how I installed it, but everything I've tried to remove it doesn't work. Things I've tried:

1. sudo umake web visual-studio-code --remove: This says "can't remove because you don't have it installed," which I know isn't true. I was able to find the files in /home/jacob/.local/share/umake/web/visual-studio-code. Deleting those files, by the way, stops the application from running, but doesn't remove the icon from the launcher. I restored the files once I figured that out.
2. Removing via Software Center: It does show up in Software Center, but when I hit "remove" nothing happens.

Any other suggestions?

Solution 1

I did it with the following command:

sudo apt purge code

to uninstall the program and then:

sudo apt autoremove

to remove the menu items/shortcuts etc as @Joe suggested.

I hope it helps!

Solution 2

sudo dpkg --remove visual-studio-code

This will remove the software (including the Dash icon/desktop entry).

I think that this method will leave the configuration information around (if you re-install); there's also a purge option on dpkg that will remove this information as well.

sudo dpkg --purge visual-studio-code

Solution 3

As none of the above answer has been accepted so I am assuming it didn't solve your problem. If you cannot find it with apt or dpkg then most likely it was installed with snap as was in my case. To remove it just type:

snap remove code

Solution 4

I had to update VS Code from the Software Center to uninstall it properly. -_-

After that, this worked perfectly:

sudo apt-get purge code

Solution 5

I was running into the very same problem today. None of the provided answers solved it for me. So I tried:

$ which visual-studio-code
/home/tim/.local/share/umake/bin/visual-studio-code

I was having a look at that directory and realized it was a symlink to

/home/tim/.local/share/umake/bin/visual-studio-code -> 
/home/tim/.local/share/umake/ide/visual-studio-code/bin/code*

So I was able to remove it with

umake ide visual-studio-code --remove

(Note how I use umake ide and not umake web)

View more solutions

Comments

[T04435]

Check on the folder, if you have a uninstall.sh file

[Daniel]

You may also want to remove /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vscode.list to drop the vscode repo.

[Felix Orinda]

To uninstall vscode in debian distros: sudo apt purge code then remove the plugins by rm -rf /home/<user>/.vscode then remove all the configuration by also removing the config by rm -rf /home/<user>/.config/Code A link to the same code.visualstudio.com/docs/setup/uninstall

[JacobTheDev]

Thanks, but I get the following error: dpkg: warning: ignoring request to remove visual-studio-code which isn't installed. This is driving me crazy, I can see it installed -_-

[JacobTheDev]

Output: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done E: Unable to locate package visual-studio-code

[yucer]

It works for me. But only with code instead of visual-studio-code (code_1.14.0-1499719149_amd64.deb)

[yucer]

try with code instead of visual-studio-code

[Jacob van Lingen]

I had to uninstall it, to update VS Code properly :P.

[user309383]

AFAIK on Ubuntu this is practically the same as apt solution (perhaps more low level than APT method). However, I believe this is better solution if you have installed VS code via .deb package originally (e.g. downloaded .deb from VS code web site). This shall be applicable to older Ubuntus. More recent ubuntu allow installing code using snap and removal is better done from app manager.

[user309383]

Never tried dev packages installation frameworks, but this is good hint if one used such method to install VScode.

[Admin]

After sudo apt-get purge code, I just had to run sudo apt autoremove to remove the menu items/shortcuts and stuff like that.

[Admin]

After sudo apt-get purge code, I had to run sudo apt autoremove to remove the menu items/shortcuts and stuff like that.

[haralambov]

Good point. Answer updated. Cheers!

[vohrahul]

This should be the correct answer. Thanks mate. Saved me a lot of time.

[Philipp]

Running those commands already removed the shortcut for me. After uninstalling I installed VSCode again but this time via sudo snap install code --classic - snap has more recent versions and keeps it updated automatically.