Ubuntu – Uninstall Netflix Desktop

netflixuninstall

I recently installed Netflix Desktop, but I would like to uninstall it. But I'm a noob when it comes to Ubuntu and I can't find it in the Software Center, how do I go about uninstalling it?

Best Answer

The best way to remove Netflix Desktop (see also official site) depends on how you installed it.

So far, Netflix Desktop is not available in any of Ubuntu's official software sources. So the project maintains a PPA. You most likely installed it that way.

If you installed netflix-desktop from the PPA:

If you're planning to reinstall Netflix Desktop soon, your best bet it to just remove the package installed from the PPA (without removing the PPA).

Otherwise the best thing to do is to purge the PPA from your configured software sources and uninstall netflix-desktop (and any other packages that might be installed from it--that PPA does provide other pacakges as well, and unless you know you want them, you probably don't).

Purging the PPA and all the software installed from it can be done with a single command--but you may need to install the command first. This does both:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:ehoover/compholio

Even if you've already removed just the package with sudo apt-get remove netflix-desktop, you can still remove the PPA and any other packages installed from it with the above ppa-purge command. (See this question if you're interested in details of how ppa-purge, and its alternatives, work.)

If you got nextflix-desktop the old way, unpacking the archive in your home folder:

Before the PPA, Netflix Desktop was installed by unpacking an archive to a .netflix-desktop folder inside the user's home folder. As blogged, you can remove that by running:

rm -Rf ~/.netflix-desktop

Be very careful when you run that. If you accidentally put a space between ~ an / or / and ., you'll delete your whole home directory, including all your documents!

(If you prefer to remove the .netflix-desktop folder from the comfort of a GUI, open a Nautilus window, navigate to your home folder if you're not already there, press Ctrl+H to click View > Show Hidden Files, and delete the .netflix-desktop folder.)

If you were using Netflix Desktop installed this way, you might want to try the newer version from the PPA; it may work better for you. And if you used the old version and then tried the PPA version without removing the old version, you may be able to fix some problems with it by removing the folder from the old version and starting over.

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