Canonical has been heavily pushing snaps in Ubuntu these last few years, and this has left users divided. Proponents love the convenience, larger selection of programs, and features that snaps bring while critics argue that snaps are closed-source, slower, heavier, and unreliable. Snap is a work in progress and is constantly being improved. But some of the concerns are definitely valid. If you want to uninstall certain snaps, or remove snap entirely from your system, this article will be helpful. Uninstall Snap Packages First, list the currently installed snaps with snap list Specify the package name to remove the package. For e.g., sudo snap remove discord You can remove whichever manually installed snaps you dislike with this method. For most users, I recommend stopping there. Snap is useful for installing certain programs not available through any other means (e.g., acrordrdc – Adobe Reader). Removing snap means you’ll need to find alternatives to commonly used packages such as Firefox or the Snap Store. As it’s being increasingly integrated into Ubuntu, you may have to find alternatives to a lot more things in future Ubuntu versions. Essentially, removing snap is easy and safe for now, but you should understand how it may affect your system in the long term before proceeding. Remove Snap Completely First, list the snaps and remove all the manually installed ones as explained in the previous section. Once only the default snaps remain, proceed further. Remove Default Snaps Now, you can remove the default snaps in the order shown below. This order will prevent any dependency errors. sudo snap remove --purge firefox sudo snap remove --purge snap-store sudo snap remove --purge gnome-3-38-2004 sudo snap remove --purge gnome-42-2204 sudo snap remove --purge gtk-common-themes sudo snap remove --purge gtk2-common-themes sudo snap remove --purge snapd-desktop-integration sudo snap remove --purge bare sudo snap remove --purge core20 sudo snap remove --purge core22 sudo snap remove --purge snapd Cleanup Snap Files If you want, you can confirm that you removed all the snaps by using snap list again. Afterward, manually delete any remaining files using sudo rm -rf /var/cache/snapd/ Finally, remove the snapd package and any leftover files with sudo apt autoremove --purge snapd If any files still remain, manually delete them. sudo rm -rf ~/snap Ensuring Snap Doesn’t Reinstall You can mark the snapd package as held back to prevent it from being automatically installed. sudo apt-mark hold snapd You should also create an apt preference file and set the priority to a negative integer (P < 0). This’ll prevent the specified versions (any snapd versions in our case) from being installed. sudo nano /etc/apt/preferences.d/snap-pref Use the following config and save the file. Package: snapd Pin: release a=* Pin-Priority: -1 Update your package index afterward to implement the changes. sudo apt update Alternatives to Snap Software As mentioned earlier, the Snap Store and Firefox are two popularly used snaps that ship by default with Ubuntu. You can easily reinstall the Software Center with apt like so sudo apt install --install-suggests gnome-software Firefox is a bit more complicated. You can always try out alternatives like Google Chrome. But if you’d prefer to stick to Firefox, you can use the MozillaTeam PPA. First, ensure Firefox isn’t currently installed with sudo apt purge firefox Now, create another apt preference file to ensure a snap version of Firefox doesn’t get installed. sudo nano /etc/apt/preferences.d/firefox-snap-pref This time, we’ll set all Ubuntu* releases of Firefox (i.e., the snap versions) to negative priority. Package: firefox* Pin: release o=Ubuntu* Pin-Priority: -1 Once that’s done, add the official MozillaTeam PPA. sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/ppa Create one more preference file for Firefox. sudo nano /etc/apt/preferences.d/firefox-ppa-pref This time, we’ll set the Firefox packages from the PPA to the highest priority. Package: firefox* Pin: release o=LP-PPA-mozillateam Pin-Priority: 501 Finally, update your package index and install Firefox. sudo apt update && sudo apt install firefox