A lot of people have come to one of my other articles looking for a way to completely uninstall Minecraft from their computer. I will show you how to do that in this article, plus show you a helpful shortcut for Windows.
Uninstall Minecraft In Windows
Minecraft is simply a set of files in your user folder.
Open My Computer and type %appdata% to get there.
Simply delete the folder called .minecraft to remove Minecraft from your computer. If you are planning to reinstall the game afterward, you may want to copy your save game folder before deleting. I have verified that the newly released Minecraft 1.8 is still installed to this same directory in Windows.
You probably have a shortcut on your desktop that you can delete as well.
Uninstall Minecraft In OS X
For Mac users, you can find your Minecraft install under ~/Library/Application Support.
Simply delete your Minecraft folder here to remove the game.
Aside from the game, there will also be cached files from http://minecraft.net under Applications>Utilities>Java Preferences in the Network tab. Delete these also to complete your uninstall.
Additional Information
Minecraft is a self contained program that runs using Java. Unlike pretty much every other game, Minecraft does not enter data into the registry of your operating system.
You do not have to worry about leftover settings somewhere after deleting the game’s folder.
Also, if you get an error when trying to delete your game folder, that means that something in the folder is still in use. The most obvious reason would be that the game is still running. If it continues to give you errors, restart your computer and then try to delete the folder.
If this information helped you out, leave a comment! Thanks!
i have deleted all the files that are connected with minecraft, but can download it from minecraft.com. when i click download it says: Fatal exception occured. Program will exit. the same reaction I had when i clicked on minecraft exe. so i thought deleting whole minecraft would have worked, but now I cant download it?? could u help me?
umm there is no minecraft folder there for me D: But i have the minecraft icon right there in front of me and it works.
It looks like things have changed in the recent release. This article is getting old.
You can find out where your version is installed by right clicking that icon and checking out ‘properties.’
all i want to do is find my mc folder iv done everything, even going to library aplacation support all that jazz and i can’t find it i swear iv looked everywhere and no sign of the folder. the thing is i can still play minecraft to!!!!????!!!! WTF MATE WHAT DO I DOOOO AHHHHHHHHHHHG!!!!
Hey Alex, I don’t know enough about OS X to help you out here, but I do know that the install path has not changed for Windows. Maybe someone with Mac knowledge can chime in and help out. Maybe you have a setting to not display certain types of files or something. Do you have a shortcut that you can follow to the source?
Minecraft for the Mac has become totally annoying on our school machines. How on earth can this be totally removed and/or blocked? We have a dual platform environment. Our network is on Windows Active Directory so there is no way that we can centrally manage the stupid Mac machines. Is there a one-click uninstaller for the Mac available?
So you are trying to keep students from playing instead of using the computers for school?
There’s no uninstaller per-say, because Minecraft is just a folder and not actually installed on the machine (at least until recently, anyway). Newer versions may have changed, but it’s still the same on Windows versions- just a folder for the game.
Um, i deleted everything to do with minecraft since it was having a problem updating. I deleted the file that should be in application support yet i put it on the sidebar about a month ago, so i can get to it easily. I expected it to be in application support when I had re-downloaded it, and It wasnt there. I tried looking it up if it were anywhere in my computer yet it wasnt. O.o’ im worried now because i cant have textures now and i cant update minecraft. Help? >.<
I unninstalled it but the .minecraft folder was still there and everytime i try and delete it the computer says i need “permission” we only have one account on this computer and now i cant redownload the game..
are you an administrator on your computer? Looks like your user doesn’t have rights to remove that. You might be able to enter Safe Mode and delete the folder through there, or you can try editing the Roaming folder: right click Roaming folder > Properties > Security
Hi, my son is an avid minecraft player. However, his hard drive recently crashed on his computer and we are sending it out to have the hard drive replaced. This means he will lose EVERYTHING on his laptop and it will be like we just bought it. My question is will he have to purchase Minecraft again or is there a way to re-download his that he already purchased??? I am sorry if this is off topic but i don’t know where else to turn there is no contact info on Minecraft. PLEASE HELP!!!!! Thank you
Actually you can go and re-download it anytime you need to (at least that’s the way it has always worked), since you create an account when it was bought.