Uninstall older versions of Java from macOS

February 11, 2019 — 1 Min Read

Sometimes it happens that after installing different versions of Java you want to remove the old/unused ones: in this brief tutorial we’ll see how to list all the installed versions and remove the one that are not required anymore from macOS.

First we need to list all the installed version using the command /usr/libexec/java_home -V:

$ /usr/libexec/java_home -V
Matching Java Virtual Machines (5):
  11.0.2, x86_64:	"Java SE 11.0.2"	/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk-11.0.2.jdk/Contents/Home
  10.0.2, x86_64:	"Java SE 10.0.2"	/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk-10.0.2.jdk/Contents/Home
  1.8.0_181, x86_64:	"Java SE 8"         /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_181.jdk/Contents/Home
  1.6.0_65-b14-468, x86_64:	"Java SE 6"	/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home
  1.6.0_65-b14-468, i386:	"Java SE 6"	/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home

It will list all the installed versions (JRE and JDK) with the related path.

Next and last thing to do is to remove the version we don’t need anymore with the following command:

sudo rm -rf /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/<version_to_remove>

For instance:

sudo rm -rf /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk-10.0.2.jdk
sudo rm -rf /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk

Then it will result in:

$ /usr/libexec/java_home -V
Matching Java Virtual Machines (2):
  11.0.2, x86_64:	"Java SE 11.0.2"	/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk-11.0.2.jdk/Contents/Home
  1.8.0_181, x86_64:	"Java SE 8"	/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_181.jdk/Contents/Home