How can PPAs be removed?

I've added many PPAs using the add-apt-repository command. Is there a simple way to remove these PPAs? I've checked in /etc/apt/sources.list for the appropriate deb lines but they aren't there.

This is on a server system so a command line solution would be great!


There are a number of options:

  1. Use the --remove flag, similar to how the PPA was added:

    sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:whatever/ppa
    
  2. You can also remove PPAs by deleting the .list files from /etc/apt/sources.list.d directory.

  3. As a safer alternative, you can install ppa-purge:

    sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
    

    And then remove the PPA, downgrading gracefully packages it provided to packages provided by official repositories:

    sudo ppa-purge ppa:whatever/ppa
    

    Note that this will uninstall packages provided by the PPA, but not those provided by the official repositories. If you want to remove them, you should tell it to apt:

    sudo apt-get purge package_name
    
  4. Last but not least, you can also disable or remove PPAs from the "Software Sources" section in Ubuntu Settings with a few clicks of your mouse (no terminal needed).


Simply run apt-add-repository again with the --remove option to remove a PPA added via the command-line. For example:

sudo apt-add-repository --remove ppa:kernel-ppa/ppa

Then update with:

sudo apt-get update