Looking to get rid of Java on your Windows or Mac computer? While necessary for some web users, most people don’t need to risk running Java on their machine because of all the security holes associated with Java.
In this article, I will talk about the steps you need to take to completely remove all traces of Java from your Windows computer. The process for Mac is a bit different, so you can scroll down Remove Java on Mac if you are running OS X.
Note that newer versions of Java (Java 8v20 and up) have a built-in tool to automatically uninstall older Java versions, but sometimes the tool doesn’t remove everything either. Also, it keeps the latest version installed which you may not want.
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Is Java installed?
You can check if you have Java installed in Windows by going to Control Panel and searching Java Icon. If you see it there, it means you have Java installed.
Using this Control Panel option you can also disable Java in your web browser without uninstalling it. I will also explain that option below. If you go back to Control Panel and click on Programs and Features, you can see all the different versions of Java installed on your computer.
So what’s next? The first thing I do when I remove Java on Windows is uninstall the old versions first.
Remove older Java versions
To get rid of older versions you can download and install the latest version of Java which will automatically check for older versions and then install the latest version or you can run Java Uninstall Tool.
The applet will check your Java version and then remove the outdated versions. If there are older versions, you will get a notification showing the versions and giving you the ability to uninstall them.
Click Uninstall selected versions to remove older versions. As you can see, I don’t need Java 8 Update 60 because i have the newest one Java 8 Update 65 Setting. Now that you only have the latest version, we can do one of two things: disable Java or uninstall it.
Turn off Java
If you need to use Java for certain websites from time to time, but don’t need to enable it all the time, you can disable it instead of uninstalling it. To do this, open Control Panel, click Java and then click Guard navigation.
Unchecked Allow java content in browser to disable Java in Internet Explorer. It should be noted that Chrome doesn’t even support Java anymore as of version 42, so you don’t have to worry about this in that browser.
For Firefox you have to click Toolsafterward Add-ons and choose additional. Click Java Platform and then click Disable. Note that even though Java is disabled, it may become obsolete and there is still a security hole for your computer since it was installed.
Uninstall Java in Windows
To uninstall Java, first remove the older versions as shown above, then go to Control Panel and Programs and Features. Click on the latest Java version listed there and click Uninstall.
Technically this is all you have to do, but if you really want to get rid of any traces of Java I would recommend using a freeware application called JavaRa. After you download it, just run the app. You’ll see a few icons, but the one we want to use is Remove Java Runtime.
On the first screen, it will tell you that the uninstaller was not found, which is okay because we have uninstalled all the Java versions. Just click Next button.
The most important part of this program is Step 2. Here you want to click Implement the deletion procedure this button will delete any leftover Java files, folders, and registry entries.
Even after uninstalling Java with its own tools, JavaRa was able to remove 12 more items left behind.
Click Next and you will see a button to download the latest version. Unless you want to reinstall Java just click Next and then click End on the next screen. Now Java has been completely removed from your Windows system.
Remove Java on Mac
On a Mac, everything is pretty much the same, except for the uninstallation process. You can see if Java is installed on your Mac in a pretty similar way to Windows. Just open it System Preferences and check if there are Java icon at the bottom.
If the Java icon is there, it means you have Java installed on OS X. Also, just like in Windows, you can choose to continue installing Java, but disable it in Safari if you want. The first way is to click on the Java icon in System Preferences, it will open Java Control Panel, looks exactly like in Windows. Click Guard and then uncheck Enable Java content in the browser box.
The alternative is to disable Java in Safari directly. To do that, open The hunt and then go to Interests.
Click Guard and then click Install the plug-in button at the bottom next to Internet Plug-in.
You should see Java in the list, and unchecking the box will disable Java in Safari. If you want to uninstall Java on OS X, it’s a bit technical. First, open End by clicking Spark and type in Terminal or by going to Applications – Utilities and then Terminal.
Now copy and paste the following commands one by one and press Enter after pasting each command.
sudo rm -fr /Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin sudo rm -fr /Library/PreferencePanes/JavaControlPanel.prefpane
When you press enter, you will be asked to enter your admin password. If everything goes well, you won’t see any output.
If you go in and check System Preferences, the Java icon will disappear. Also, if you go to the plugins section in Safari, it will also disappear from the list of installed plugins. That’s about it to remove Java on Mac. If you have any questions, feel free to post a comment. Interesting!
