Java With Us

How to Uninstall Java on Windows, Mac, Linux

Updated on 2026-04-21 Reviewed by the Java With Us editorial team

Uninstalling Java is straightforward on every OS. Use the standard system uninstall mechanism — Apps & Features on Windows, brew or rm -rf on Mac, apt remove or dnf remove on Linux.

Windows

  1. Open Settings > Apps > Installed apps.
  2. Search for "Java", "JDK", "Temurin", "Corretto" or whatever vendor you installed.
  3. Click the three-dot menu next to each entry and choose Uninstall.
  4. Repeat for every version listed — Windows keeps each version independent.
  5. Open a new Command Prompt and run java -version. It should say "not recognized".

Alternatively, via winget:

winget uninstall EclipseAdoptium.Temurin.21.JDK

macOS

Homebrew installs:

brew uninstall openjdk@21
# Remove the symlink too:
sudo rm /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/openjdk-21.jdk

.pkg installs (Oracle or Temurin):

# Remove the JDK bundle:
sudo rm -rf /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/temurin-21.jdk

# Remove Oracle control panel if present:
sudo rm -rf /Library/PreferencePanes/JavaControlPanel.prefPane
sudo rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Oracle/Java

Verify removal:

java -version   # should fail or fall back to another installed version

Linux (Debian/Ubuntu)

sudo apt remove openjdk-21-jdk openjdk-21-jre
sudo apt autoremove   # clean up orphaned packages

Remove all OpenJDK versions at once:

sudo apt remove --purge 'openjdk-*'
sudo apt autoremove

Linux (Fedora/RHEL)

sudo dnf remove java-21-openjdk-devel java-21-openjdk

Manual tarball installs

If you installed Java by extracting a tarball into /opt or ~, just delete the directory:

sudo rm -rf /opt/jdk-21
# Also remove the JAVA_HOME and PATH entries from ~/.bashrc or /etc/profile.d/java.sh

After uninstalling

Remove leftover environment variables: delete or comment out JAVA_HOME and the $JAVA_HOME/bin PATH entry from ~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc or /etc/environment. Otherwise, PATH may point at a now-missing directory.

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