Uninstalling Visual Studio for Mac

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You can use this guide to uninstall each component in Visual Studio for Mac individually by navigating to the relevant section, or you can use the scripts provided in the Uninstall Script section to uninstall everything.

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Uninstall Script

There are two scripts that can be used to uninstall Visual Studio for Mac and all components for your machine:

The following sections provide information on downloading and using the scripts.

Visual Studio for Mac and Xamarin script

You can uninstall Visual Studio and Xamarin components in one go by using the uninstall script.

This uninstall script contains most of the commands that you will find in the article. There are three main omissions from the script and are not included due to possible external dependencies. To remove this, jump to the relevant section below and remove them manually:

To run the script, do the following steps:

  1. Right-click on the script and select Save As to save the file on your Mac.

  2. Open Terminal and change the working directory to where the script was downloaded:

    cd /location/of/file

  3. Make the script executable and the run it with sudo:

    chmod +x ./uninstall-vsmac.sh
sudo ./uninstall-vsmac.sh

  4. Finally, delete the uninstall script and remove Visual Studio for Mac from the dock (if it's there).

.NET Core script

The uninstall script for .NET Core is located in the dotnet cli repo

To run the script, do the following steps:

  1. Right-click on the script and select Save As to save the file on your Mac.

  2. Open Terminal and change the working directory to where the script was downloaded:

    cd /location/of/file

  3. Make the script executable and the run it with sudo:

    chmod +x ./dotnet-uninstall-pkgs.sh
sudo ./dotnet-uninstall-pkgs.sh

  4. Finally, delete the .NET Core uninstall script.

Uninstall Visual Studio for Mac

The first step in uninstalling Visual Studio from a Mac is to locate Visual Studio.app in the /Applications directory and drag it to the Trash Can. Alternatively, right-click and select Move to Trash as illustrated in the following image:

Move Visual Studio Application to trash

Deleting this app bundle removes Visual Studio for Mac, even though there may be other files related to Xamarin still on the file system.

To remove all traces of Visual Studio for Mac, run the following commands in Terminal:

sudo rm -rf "/Applications/Visual Studio.app"
rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/VisualStudio
rm -rf ~/Library/Preferences/VisualStudio
rm -rf ~/Library/Preferences/Visual\ Studio
rm -rf ~/Library/Logs/VisualStudio
rm -rf ~/Library/VisualStudio
rm -rf ~/Library/Preferences/Xamarin/
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/VisualStudio
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/VisualStudio/7.0/LocalInstall/Addins/
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/VisualStudio/8.0/LocalInstall/Addins/

You may also want to remove the following directory containing various Xamarin files and folders. However, before you do you should be aware that this directory contains the Android signing keys. For more information refer to the section Uninstalling Android SDK and Java SDK:

rm -rf ~/Library/Developer/Xamarin

Uninstall Mono SDK (MDK)

Mono is an open-source implementation of Microsoft's .NET Framework and is used by all Xamarin Products—Xamarin.iOS, Xamarin.Android, and Xamarin.Mac to allow development of these platforms in C#.

Warning

There are other applications outside of Visual Studio for Mac that also use Mono, such as Unity. Be sure that there are no other dependencies on Mono before uninstalling it.

To remove the Mono Framework from a machine, run the following commands in Terminal:

sudo rm -rf /Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework
sudo pkgutil --forget com.xamarin.mono-MDK.pkg
sudo rm -rf /etc/paths.d/mono-commands

Uninstall Xamarin.Android

There are a number of items required for the installation and use of Xamarin.Android, such as the Android SDK and Java SDK.

Use the following commands to remove Xamarin.Android:

sudo rm -rf /Developer/MonoDroid
rm -rf ~/Library/MonoAndroid
sudo pkgutil --forget com.xamarin.android.pkg
sudo rm -rf /Library/Frameworks/Xamarin.Android.framework

Uninstall Android SDK and Java SDK

The Android SDK is required for development of Android applications. To completely remove all parts of the Android SDK, locate the file at ~/Library/Developer/Xamarin/ and move it to Trash.

Warning

You should be aware that Android signing keys that are generated by Visual Studio for Mac are located in ~/Library/Developer/Xamarin/Keystore. Make sure to back these up appropriately, or avoid removing this directory if you wish to keep your keystore.

The Java SDK (JDK) does not need to be uninstalled, as it is already pre-packaged as part of Mac OS X / macOS.

Uninstall Android AVD

Warning

There are other applications outside of Visual Studio for Mac that also use Android AVD and these additional android components, such as Android Studio.Removing this directory may cause projects to break in Android Studio.

To remove any Android AVDs and additional Android components use the following command:

rm -rf ~/.android

To remove only the Android AVDs use the following command:

rm -rf ~/.android/avd

Uninstall Xamarin.iOS

Xamarin.iOS allows iOS application development using C# or F# with Visual Studio for Mac.

Use the following commands in Terminal to remove all Xamarin.iOS files from a file system:

rm -rf ~/Library/MonoTouch
sudo rm -rf /Library/Frameworks/Xamarin.iOS.framework
sudo rm -rf /Developer/MonoTouch
sudo pkgutil --forget com.xamarin.monotouch.pkg
sudo pkgutil --forget com.xamarin.xamarin-ios-build-host.pkg
sudo pkgutil --forget com.xamarin.xamarin.ios.pkg

Uninstall Xamarin.Mac

Xamarin.Mac can be removed from your machine using the following two commands to eradicate the product and license from your Mac respectively:

sudo rm -rf /Library/Frameworks/Xamarin.Mac.framework
rm -rf ~/Library/Xamarin.Mac

Uninstall Workbooks and Inspector

Starting with 1.2.2, Xamarin Workbooks & Inspector can be uninstalled from a terminal by running:

sudo /Library/Frameworks/Xamarin.Interactive.framework/Versions/Current/uninstall

For older versions, you need to manually remove the following artifacts:

  • Delete the Workbooks app at "/Applications/Xamarin Workbooks.app"
  • Delete the Inspector app at "Applications/Xamarin Inspector.app"
  • Delete the add-ins: "~/Library/Application Support/XamarinStudio-6.0/LocalInstall/Addins/Xamarin.Interactive" and "~/Library/Application Support/XamarinStudio-6.0/LocalInstall/Addins/Xamarin.Inspector"
  • Delete Inspector and supporting files here: /Library/Frameworks/Xamarin.Interactive.framework and /Library/Frameworks/Xamarin.Inspector.framework

Uninstall the Xamarin Profiler

sudo rm -rf "/Applications/Xamarin Profiler.app"

Uninstall the Visual Studio Installer

Use the following commands to remove all traces of the Xamarin Universal Installer:

rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/XamarinInstaller/
rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/VisualStudioInstaller/
rm -rf ~/Library/Logs/XamarinInstaller/
rm -rf ~/Library/Logs/VisualStudioInstaller/
rm -rf ~/Library/Preferences/Xamarin/
rm -rf "~/Library/Preferences/Visual Studio/"

Uninstall Visual Studio 2019 for Mac Preview

Visual Studio 2019 for Mac Preview was launched as a separate preview, allowing you to continue to work with your Visual Studio 2017 for Mac install side-by-side.

Now that Visual Studio 2019 for Mac has been released, you can now safely remove the Visual Studio 2019 for Mac Preview application.

To uninstall the preview application bundle, select Visual Studio (Preview) from your Applications folder and click Move to Trash, as depicted in the following image:

selecting "move to trash" option in finder

You can also remove the Preview plist file with the following command:

rm -rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.visual-studio-preview.plist

See also