Uninstalling Anaconda Distribution

When uninstalling Anaconda, you have two options: a full uninstall or a simple remove. A simple remove is fine for most users. If you don’t want to completely remove every aspect of Anaconda Distribution from your computer, skip to Simple remove.

Full Uninstall

A full uninstall removes all traces of the configuration files and directories from Anaconda and its programs with the anaconda-clean program.

  1. In Windows, open Anaconda Prompt. In Mac or Linux, open your terminal application.

  2. Install the anaconda-clean package:

    conda install anaconda-clean

  3. Then, run anaconda-clean. Run the command by itself to remove all Anaconda-related files and directories with a confirmation prompt before deleting each one, or use the --yes argument to remove all those files and directories without being asked to confirm each one.

    # If you want to confirm each file and directory you are deleting
anaconda-clean

# If you don't want to be asked about each file and directory
anaconda-clean --yes

  4. anaconda-clean creates a backup of all files and directories that might be removed in a folder named .anaconda_backup in your home directory. Also note that anaconda-clean leaves your data files in the AnacondaProjects directory untouched.

  • After using anaconda-clean, follow the instructions in Simple remove to finish uninstalling Anaconda Distribution.

Simple remove

A simple remove will leave a few files behind, which for most users is just fine.

Windows

  1. Open the file explorer.
  2. Delete your environment (anaconda3\envs) and package (anaconda3\pkgs) folders in your user folder.
  3. Open Add or remove programs and uninstall your Anaconda installation or your version of Python.

macOS or Linux

  1. Open your terminal application.

  2. Remove your entire Anaconda directory with rm -rf. Depending on your installation, your anaconda2 or anaconda3 directory will be in your root folder or in your opt folder.

    # The following are a few examples of how you may need to delete your Anaconda folder
rm -rf anaconda3
rm -rf ~/anaconda3
rm -rf ~/opt/anaconda3

  3. Close and reopen your terminal to refresh it. You should no longer see (base) in your terminal prompt.

Removing Anaconda path from .bash_profile

If you use Linux or macOS, you may also wish to check your .bash_profile or .zprofile file in your home directory for a line such as:

export PATH="/Users/jsmith/anaconda3/bin:$PATH"

Note

Replace /Users/jsmith/anaconda3/ with your actual path.

This line adds the Anaconda path to your PATH environment variable. It may refer to either Anaconda or Miniconda. After uninstalling Anaconda, delete this line.

  1. Make sure you’re in your home directory. The easiest way to do this is to open a new terminal window.
  2. Enter open .bash_profile or open .zprofile to open your terminal’s profile file.
  3. Delete the above line from the file.
  4. Save.
  5. Close and reopen your terminal to refresh it.