How to Quickly Uninstall Steam [Windows, Mac, and Linux]

How to Uninstall Steam App on a Windows PC

If you're using Steam on a Windows device and you want to remove the app and everything associated with it, then first you'll want to uninstall all the Steam games on your PC. There are many ways you can uninstall Steam games, but the best one is definitely to open the Steam library and uninstall your downloaded games from there before you ditch and remove Steam completely!

Some Steam games are totally unplayable the Steam client is removed, especially if they're multiplayer online games so that's why you'll want to remove them. But if you want to return to those games someday, keep them just in case but know they'll be holding PC memory. With that little dilemma out of the way, here's how to uninstall Steam on a Windows PC:

1. In the Search tab below, type in "Control Panel" and open the Control Panel app.
2. Make sure the "View by" option on the top is set to "Category."
3. Under the Programs section, click "Uninstall a Program."
4. Find Steam here and click/select it.
5. On top, select "Uninstall" and proceed with the necessary steps.

If going through the Steam library uninstalling all the games is a hassle, then you can uninstall Steam games from the Control Panel as well. But they'll be combined with all the other applications on your device, so it can be hard to locate and remove all the games!

How to Uninstall Steam Client on a Mac Device

Whether you're using a Mac device to play Steam games or not, it's pretty easy to uninstall the client app. Like previously with Windows, you should probably first uninstall Steam games from within the Steam app library. That is if you don't want to reinstall Steam in the future!

However, if you wish to keep the games and play them in the future, you don't have to uninstall your Steam games. So knowing that here's how to uninstall Steam on a Mac device:

1. Open up the Finder app on Mac located on the bottom left corner of the dock.
2. On the left side open the "Applications" folder.
3. Find and locate Steam in the "Applications" folder.
4. Right-click Steam and select "Move to bin."
5. Open the bin and clear it.

And that's it for uninstalling Steam on a Mac! You can delete the all your games on Steam within the Application's folder using this method if you don't want to go through them in the Steam library. You can also use some app cleaner to remove programs that don't work anymore due to removing Steam. 

Just know that even the best Steam games will be using your precious Mac memory if you click the uninstall button, and there is virtually no way to restore games other than re-installing them again.

How to Uninstall Steam Client on a Linux Device

It's pretty easy when it comes to uninstalling Steam on a Linux device. If there are games you don't want to take memory from your device, delete them first directly from the Steam client library. Then you'll just have to use some commands to clear things up, so here's how the uninstallation process for Steam looks on a Linux device:

1. Open up the Linux terminal.
2. Type in "apt remove steam" and press Enter.
3. If you're asked whether you want to continue, press the Y key and hit Enter.
4. When the process finishes, type in "apt autoclean" to get rid of some unnecessary Steam files.

Some Ubuntu Linux systems may be different, so you can try writing "sudo apt-get remove steam", and then "sudo apt-get purge steam" in the terminal to uninstall the Steam client. If you uninstall Steam here though, you'll have to use some other Steam alternatives to get your games!

How to Uninstall Steam by Deleting the Folder

If you delete the whole Steam folder, not only will the Steam client be removed, but the other Steam games will be deleted as well. So proceed uninstalling Steam by deleting the folder with caution!

Below we'll be using the default location for Steam. If you've installed it in a different folder, you'll want to get its folder path location. With that said, here's how to uninstall Steam by deleting its whole folder:

1. On Windows, open the file manager and go to Steam's folder location, the default one being "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam."
2. Select the entire Steam folder, press Shift-Delete, and select Yes to delete Steam alongside its games.
3. On Mac, open the Finder app, press Control+Shift+G, and insert Steam's location path, the default being "~/Library/Application Support/".
4. Find the "steam" folder, move it to the bin, and clear the bin to delete Steam.
5. On Linux, open the terminal, type in "rm -rf ~/.local/share/Steam && rm -rf ~/.steam", and press Enter.
6. If you have a different location path on Linux for Steam, type it in after "-rf" and before the "&&" characters.

And that's everything you need to know on completely uninstalling Steam. Just remember that you won't be able to play free Steam games anymore if you get rid of it!