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.

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. Remove snapd packages.

    $ 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/ 

Guide compatibility:

Operating System
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus)
Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak)
Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus)
Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark)
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver)
Ubuntu 18.10 (Cosmic Cuttlefish)
Ubuntu 19.04 (Disco Dingo)