How to uninstall n and all node versions installed by n

You need to manually remove Node versions installed by n and set the correct Node system version.

sudo n prune
sudo npm uninstall -g n
sudo rm -r /usr/local/n
sudo rm /usr/local/bin/node 

See the following issues for n on GitHub:

  • Cant uninstall n and node #327
  • Simple command to switch back to the system installation of Node #486

There have been some changes in n, so I'll provide an updated and longer answer.

First some context. n installs by default to /usr/local. If that is also the location of the "system" install of node and npm then it is overwritten. The cache of previously downloaded versions is kept in /usr/local/n.

Removing cached node versions downloaded by n:

  • n prune removes all but the version matching the active version of node
  • since n v3.0.0, deleting the active version is allowed using n rm <version>
  • (but just manually deleting /usr/local/n is easy and removes the top folder too!)

Removing installed node and npm and npx et al:

  • since n v4.1.0, there is n uninstall. (You will need to reinstall the system node and npm to keep using them if they were installed to same location and overwritten.)

Uninstalling n itself: if you installed it with npm install n then you uninstall it with npm uninstall n. This does not affect the cached versions of node or the installed version of node, just n. (And there is a small catch-22 if just deleted npm by running n uninstall!)