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I'm having a problem with Chrome and one of its extensions, so I want to completely uninstall everything. I've uninstalled Chrome through the Software Center, but when I reinstall it, all of my extensions and preferences are still there.

If I want to start over from scratch, what do I need to do?

jrg
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EmmyS
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    I'm going to make this into a more general question, since the directions here will cover both Chromium and Google Chrome. – jrg Feb 15 '12 at 21:10

3 Answers3

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Note: this recipe has been updated in

  • 2023 to include instructions for Snap-based installations
  • 2020 to more safely backup the files rather than using a recursive delete

Snap-based installation (Ubuntu 22.04+)

Uninstalling the Chromium Snap is relatively straightforward:

sudo snap remove chromium

APT-based installation (< Ubuntu 22.04)

To uninstall Chromium Browser, run these commands from your terminal:

$ sudo apt-get purge chromium-browser
$ mv ~/.config/chromium/ ~/.config/chromium.bak/

To uninstall Google Chrome, run these commands from your terminal:

$ sudo apt-get purge google-chrome-stable
$ mv ~/.config/google-chrome/ ~/.config/google-chrome.bak/

In both examples, the first command removes the package, while the second command will move custom settings, such as plugins, to a backup directory.

Brylie Christopher Oxley
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    Successfully uninstall 'Google Chrome' stable. – Amitabha Biswas May 23 '16 at 08:19
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    Don't forget there are also files in ~/.cache/google-chrome/ and ~/.config/google-chrome/. And there are variants of Google chrome like google-chrome-beta and google-chrome-stable. If in doubt you can check you've got everything by running locate google-chrome. locate is a local search tool that can be installed with sudo apt install locate – Peter Feb 08 '19 at 10:05
  • For me, locate google-chrome returned a lot of files that had already been deleted. If anyone faces the same problem, run sudo updatedb to update mlocate database. (locate searches for entries in mlocate database) – Nitish Parkar Jul 31 '20 at 08:07
  • This may have been correct at the time, but as of Ubuntu 22.04 you must "sudo snap remove chromium". See https://askubuntu.com/questions/1401800/how-to-remove-chromium-from-snap . – SomeoneElse Sep 30 '23 at 13:30
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For Google Chrome:

Deleting ~/.config/google-chrome (where ~ is your home directory) should be sufficient. Why don't you try it and see? (Of course, this will delete all your bookmarks too.)

If that's not sufficient, you may want to also remove Google Chrome from the Terminal using the sudo apt-get purge ... command (where ... is replaced by the package you want to remove or a space-separated list of the packages you want to remove), or remove it in the Synaptic Package Manager (which you can install in the Software Center if you don't have it; it's itself provided by the package synaptic) by right-clicking on the packages you want to remove and clicking "Mark for Complete Removal". These ways of removing packages will remove all global (i.e., non-user-specific) configuration files.

For Chromium (the completely open source counterpart to Chrome):

You can do it the same way, just delete ~/.config/chromium. You can also remove the package as mentioned above for Google Chrome. The package that provides Chromium in Ubuntu is called chromium-browser.

Eliah Kagan
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  • Bookmarks are saved in XMarks, so not an issue. I'll try deleting the folder and see if that helps. If not, I'll try the other suggestions. Thanks. – EmmyS Nov 23 '11 at 23:30
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    how do I remove Chrome from the terminal using apt-get purge .... ? – Alan Coromano Sep 08 '13 at 00:18
  • You can find where the Chrome file is using which google-chrome and deleting it there. It should be in /usr/bin/ – Tristan Wiley Apr 13 '17 at 21:28
  • this answer is incomplete because it doesnt note that chrome is called google-chrome-stable under apt-get. – Elliott Aug 23 '18 at 16:49
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I successfully removed Google Chrome by running the following command:

sudo apt-get purge google-chrome-stable
Tim
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Ishan
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