Completely uninstall VS Code extensions

Question

Since the latest release of VS Code, I get an error whenever I open a C# file (I have installed the csharp language extension, powered by OmniSharp). This is the error I get:

I tried uninstalling the extension and re-install it, same problem. I uninstalled the application altogether and reinstalled it - but when I do that, my extensions are still installed (for instance Python and reStructuredText were still there). I uninstalled yet again and deleted the %USER%\AppData\Roaming|Local\Code directory. When I reinstalled, the extensions were still there.

How do I completely remove the installed extensions? I'd like to be sure I'm starting from scratch before opening a bug for the OmniSharp extension crash.

Deilan · Accepted Answer · 2024-01-08 04:34:15Z

292

Turns out the extensions are stored under %USER%\.vscode\extensions. Deleting that gets rid of them.

For Windows: %USERPROFILE%\.vscode\extensions

Location of extensions for Linux/MAC: ~/.vscode/extensions

edited Jan 8, 2024 at 4:34

Deilan

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answered Apr 20, 2016 at 17:48

Astaar

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7 Comments

Pacerier Over a year ago

Why are extensions themselves allowed to litter across the filesystem even after extension is uninstalled? for example, I downloaded a restclient and it writes to ~/.rest-client instead of keeping it to the ~/.vscode/extensions/* folder...

John Edwards Over a year ago

Deleting these and re-installing fixed all of my extension issues. So thankful for this post.

Zhe Over a year ago

@Pacerier because VSCode extensions are arbitrary JavaScript code that runs in an unrestricted (non-sandboxed) Node.js environment by Electron, and there is no way to limit what a extension can do with this architecture.

Daniel W Over a year ago

Worked great, thanks. I've been trying to get rid of copilot but it kept reinstalling itself, now it's finally gone. Hopefully never to be seen again

Shamsul Haque Over a year ago

It worked great, but beware it will remove all extensions and you might want to do it for only specific items which had issues in uninstalling or something. So better to keep a backup list of required extensions. so you can install it after removing all. hope it will some someone's time.

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cobrexus · Accepted Answer · 2022-05-23 17:18:40Z

101

All the answers above are correct, but for a beginner, I wanted to add that all you have to do is, run this command in your terminal to remove ALL extensions/themes.

For Mac/Linux

rm -rf ~/.vscode/extensions

For Windows

rmdir %USERPROFILE%\.vscode\extensions /s

edited May 23, 2022 at 17:18

cobrexus

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answered Mar 26, 2018 at 18:34

Ahmad Awais

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2 Comments

Ahmad Awais Over a year ago

That's the questions being asked here.

snowcode Over a year ago

This is incorrect, or only "partially correct". Please see @Pacerier comment further up saying extensions appear in other folders as well. These commands will clean up the extensions living in those places but not others. For me I had to manually eyeball hidden folders (shift + cmd + . to show hidden) in '~/` to find hidden folders matching extensions. I'm still looking for an easier way.

informatik01 · Accepted Answer · 2023-02-18 13:23:05Z

39

You can remove them at:

Windows: %USERPROFILE%\.vscode\extensions
Mac: ~/.vscode/extensions
Linux: ~/.vscode/extensions

edited Feb 18, 2023 at 13:23

informatik01

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answered Jan 6, 2018 at 23:36

Dzung

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Comments

Jay Prall · Accepted Answer · 2024-09-28 21:29:26Z

33

If you are using Linux or macOS then try:

code --list-extensions | while read extension; do code --uninstall-extension $extension --force done

On Windows you can do (not try 🤔😉):

for /f "usebackq tokens=*" %f in (`code --list-extensions`) do code --uninstall-extension %f --force

Or this with Powershell:

code --list-extensions | % { code --uninstall-extension $_ --force }

edited Sep 28, 2024 at 21:29

Jay Prall

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answered May 26, 2022 at 15:41

Ahmad Ismail

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3 Comments

squareborg Over a year ago

Perfect - Your top command works for Mac with code in PATH

Ahmad Ismail Over a year ago

In case of Linux, if you have gnu parallel installed, you can also try code --list-extensions | parallel -j 4 'code --uninstall-extension {} --force'

WoJ Jan 3 at 9:08

Excellent answer (+1). I needed to make a few passes to get rid of dependencies.

arendon · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-15 19:02:44Z

20

It worked for me, but the enviroment variable was %USERPROFILE%\.vscode\extensions

answered Feb 15, 2017 at 19:02

arendon

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Comments

Denny Shimkoski · Accepted Answer · 2022-09-18 17:35:23Z

13

One line variant of Ahmad's answer:

code --list-extensions | xargs -L 1 code --uninstall-extension

answered Sep 18, 2022 at 17:35

Denny Shimkoski

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1 Comment

Meligy Over a year ago

That's the best answer in the age of sync'ed settings.

ioCron · Accepted Answer · 2021-02-10 10:50:29Z

If you want to remove a VSCode Extension in Windows 10 on WSL2 completely, then you need to look in a few additional directories:

~/.vscode-server/data/CachedExtensionVSIXs/
~/.vscode-server/data/User/globalStorage/
~/.vscode-server/extensions/

.vscode-server comes up in machines where you have sshed into using "Remote SSH" extension...

Timbioz · Accepted Answer · 2018-12-06 09:51:48Z

If you work with VS Code-Insiders extensions in folder: Windows

%USERPROFILE%.vscode-insiders\extension

MAC/Linux:

~/.vscode-insiders/extensions

suraj bhadrike · Accepted Answer · 2023-03-18 09:10:08Z

5

use following command

code --list-extensions | foreach { code --uninstall-extension $_ }

answered Mar 18, 2023 at 9:10

suraj bhadrike

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2 Comments

Kaffu Over a year ago

Awesome, some explication would be good, but this works perfectly in PowerShell for Visual Studio Code in Windows

Seyid Takele Over a year ago

Valid answer , Deleting the extension folder doesnot help because they reinstalled by sync from other device or my setting. THis uninstalled them all n all place

Tunvir Rahman Tusher · Accepted Answer · 2018-04-24 04:54:24Z

For Mac

Finder -> Go to Folder -> Go

Paste the directory ~/.vscode/extensions

Your are in your destination.

Ying-Shan Lin · Accepted Answer · 2024-11-08 11:00:13Z

For Windows: Users\username\.vscode\extensions

You may delete any extensions you don't want.

To remove cached extension files:

Click on "Show hidden items"
Navigate to: C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Code\CachedExtensionVSIXs
Delete the files for any extensions you uninstalled

Luis Nguyen · Accepted Answer · 2022-06-25 13:40:26Z

I found the following to be effective:

First, locate the extension ID:

code --list-extensions

Then, uninstall it:

code --uninstall-extension ID

Note: You must replace the ID with the ID you discovered in step one.

Carl Walsh · Accepted Answer · 2023-09-25 19:07:14Z

I had the problem after switching from 32-bit vscode to 64-bit versions of the vscode app, causing the C# extension uninstall-install flow to break in vscode.

I saw the folder ~\.vscode\extensions\ms-dotnettools.csharp-1.25.7-win32-ia32 (notice the -ia32 because 32-bit vscode had downloaded the x86 32-bit version.) After I deleted this folder then installed 64-bit vscode, trying to install the C# extension using the app's GUI or code CLI seemed to work, except after I opened vscode then it couldn't find the extension!

The fix was to open ~\.vscode\extensions\extensions.json and delete the JSON entry for ms-dotnettools.csharp which still pointed at the 32-bit extension. After deleting this part of the JSON file, installing C# extension from the GUI worked fine.

Hieu Doan · Accepted Answer · 2019-04-02 17:45:14Z

First, you have to find your resources of vscode.
The resources usually located in /usr/share (linux).
So you have to cd to /usr/share/code/resources/app to see extensions directory.
Now, you just use rm -rf extensions to remove extensions directory.

Kukka · Accepted Answer · 2024-02-23 10:05:12Z

Once the extensions folder within .vscode-server directory is deleted, you might get the following error when trying to install extensions again.

Unable to read file '/home/user/.vscode-server/extensions/extensions.json' (Error: Unable to resolve nonexistent file '/home/user/.vscode-server/extensions/extensions.json')

To resolve this, you might as well as have to recreate some deleted files.

mkdir -p /home/user/.vscode-server/extensions touch /home/user/.vscode-server/extensions/extensions.json

Try installing the extensions and everything should work.

Whizkevina · Accepted Answer · 2018-07-03 07:59:14Z

All work for me, but there is an issue need to fix to get the directory on Windows use:

%USERPROFILE%\.vscode\extension,

That's it.

jyoti chetry · Accepted Answer · 2023-03-15 06:24:13Z

It may be because of some extension so uninstall it.

First go to extensions tab and then click the 3 dots in the top right corner then disable all extensions and check if the sound is gone or not . If yes then find the extension which was causing the problem and uninstall it.

lastlink · Accepted Answer · 2023-11-13 23:34:39Z

I was having an issue on a laptop that I had migrated my settings from a previous one and maybe had some corrupted extension or something. I ended up uninstalling vscode and then manually deleting the roaming code folder completely.

C:\Users\%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Code

Then after reinstalling and I was able to install the extension afterwards.

ATP · Accepted Answer · 2025-01-30 07:52:26Z

I also had a problem with cache, Only deleting the extension folder from %USERPROFILE%\.vscode\extensions didn't do the job,

I had also to delete the cache from %appdata%/Code/CachedExtensionVSIXs

Also pay attention that some Extensions store the data in the user folder with . prefix (%USERPROFILE%/.extName)

Artem GTA · Accepted Answer · 2025-02-27 17:40:17Z

I solved this problem. Just delete extension in folder %USERPROFILE%\.vscode\extensions and delete extension's code in file %USERPROFILE%\.vscode\extensions\extension.json.

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