How do I remove Steam?

You can use Ubuntu Software Center to uninstall or Open Terminal and execute the following command:

sudo apt-get remove steam steam-launcher

Purge Steam Perfectly with Configuration files with the following:

sudo apt-get purge steam steam-launcher

Never forget to delete its directory located at home folder:

rm -rf ~/.local/share/Steam && rm -rf ~/.steam

The .deb package is just a wrapper. Steam's launcher installs itself to ~/.local/share/Steam and can be over 1GiB so make sure you remove it.

sudo apt-get purge steam
sudo apt-get purge steam-launcher
cd ~/.local/share && rm -rf Steam
rm ~/.steampath
rm ~/.steampid

You may have only one of "steam" or "steam-launcher".


Removing Steam using the Ubuntu Software Centre:

  1. Open the Ubuntu Software Centre, by clicking on the appropriate icon in the launcher, or opening the dash and searching for it.

  2. Search for "Steam" in the Ubuntu Software Centre.

  3. Select it, and click "Remove"

This will remove Steam from your system. Only system files, however, will be removed, user files will not. For most programs, user files are very small and not worth worrying about, but for Steam, they include all your downloaded games, and can be quite large. To delete your user files:

  1. Open Nautilus, the default file explorer.

  2. Click "View", "Show Hidden Files", or press Ctrl-H.

  3. Navigate to .local/share/ and delete the steam folder.

Removing steam using the command-line:

You can do the equivalent of the previous steps in just two commands:

$ sudo apt-get remove steam
$ rm -r ~/.local/share/steam

In general, programs on Linux tend to keep user files in hidden directories in the home folder, either under .local/share, .config or .cache, or in a separate .PROGRAMNAME directory. Hidden files and directories always begin with a dot.