Snap allows companies and developers to package and distribute their software efficiently. Users, however, don't necessarily like snap for reasons such as speed and size.

You can disable or remove Snap from Ubuntu by uninstalling snapd package from the terminal. By removing snapd, you'll also want to remove packages that were installed using Snap.

snap is increasingly becoming a popular way to distribute applications for Ubuntu. Check if other methods also distribute your applications of choice, or you'll need to reinstall snap on your Ubuntu system.

Steps to completely remove snapd from Ubuntu:

  1. Launch terminal.
  2. List installed snap packages.
    $ snap list
    Name               Version                     Rev   Tracking         Publisher   Notes
    chromium           85.0.4183.102               1298  latest/stable    canonical✓  -
    core18             20200724                    1885  latest/stable    canonical✓  base
    gnome-3-28-1804    3.28.0-17-gde3d74c.de3d74c  128   latest/stable    canonical✓  -
    gnome-3-34-1804    0+git.3009fc7               36    latest/stable/…  canonical✓  -
    gtk-common-themes  0.1-36-gc75f853             1506  latest/stable/…  canonical✓  -
    snap-store         3.36.0-80-g208fd61          467   latest/stable/…  canonical✓  -
    snapd              2.45.3.1                    8790  latest/stable    canonical✓  snapd
  3. Remove installed snap packages (optional).
    $ sudo snap remove chromium snap-store 
    [sudo] password for user: 
    2020-09-11T17:31:08+08:00 INFO Waiting for conflicting change in progress...
    chromium removed
    snap-store removed
  4. Stop snapd service.
    $ sudo systemctl stop snapd
    Warning: Stopping snapd.service, but it can still be activated by:
      snapd.socket
  5. Uninstall snapd using apt.
    $ sudo apt remove --purge --assume-yes snapd gnome-software-plugin-snap
    Reading package lists... Done
    Building dependency tree       
    Reading state information... Done
    Package 'gnome-software-plugin-snap' is not installed, so not removed
    The following packages will be REMOVED:
      snapd*
    0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
    After this operation, 120 MB disk space will be freed.
    (Reading database ... 185414 files and directories currently installed.)
    Removing snapd (2.45.1+20.04.2)
  6. Remove user snap directory.
    $ rm -rf ~/snap/
  7. Remove cache directory for snapd.
    $ sudo rm -rf /var/cache/snapd/ 
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