How To Uninstall Ruby On Mac

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In this blog post, we will guide you through the process of uninstalling Ruby from your Mac. There might be
several reasons why you would want to uninstall Ruby. Perhaps you want to free up some disk space or you
encountered some issues with your current Ruby installation and need to reinstall it.

Before we dive into the uninstallation process, it’s important to mention that macOS comes with a system
version of Ruby pre-installed. It’s recommended not to remove this system version, as it may cause issues with
other software that depends on it. However, if you have installed additional Ruby versions (using a version
manager like RVM or rbenv), you can safely remove them without affecting the
system Ruby.

Method 1: Uninstalling Ruby using RVM

If you have installed Ruby using RVM (Ruby Version Manager), you can easily remove the specific Ruby version
with the following command: 

    rvm remove ruby_version

Replace ruby_version with the specific version number you want to remove (e.g., 2.7.0). You can
find the list of installed Ruby versions by running: 

    rvm list

Method 2: Uninstalling Ruby using rbenv

If you have installed Ruby using rbenv (another popular Ruby version manager), you can uninstall the specific
Ruby version with the following steps:

  1. First, find the location of the Ruby version you want to remove by running: 

                rbenv prefix ruby_version

    Replace ruby_version with the specific version number you want to remove (e.g., 2.7.0).

  2. Next, remove the Ruby version directory using the rm command: 

                rm -rf path_to_ruby_version

    Replace path_to_ruby_version with the path obtained in the previous step.

Method 3: Removing Ruby without a version manager

If you have manually installed Ruby without using a version manager, you can remove it by deleting the
installation directory. To do so, follow these steps:

  1. Find the location of the Ruby installation by running: 

                which ruby

  2. If the output shows a path like /usr/local/bin/ruby, it’s likely a non-system Ruby
    installation. You can remove it using the rm command: 

                sudo rm -rf /usr/local/bin/ruby

Conclusion

In this blog post, we covered different methods to uninstall Ruby on your Mac. If you have installed Ruby using
a version manager like RVM or rbenv, you can easily remove specific Ruby versions using their respective
commands. If you have manually installed Ruby without a version manager, you can remove it by deleting the
installation directory.

Remember, it’s not recommended to remove the system Ruby version that comes pre-installed on macOS, as it may
cause issues with other software that depends on it.