Uninstall a storefront theme

This topic describes how to uninstall a storefront theme.

The way a theme should be uninstalled is defined by two factors:

The way the theme was added: manually added (installed or created), installed as composer package or as an extension.
The way the application was installed: using the source files from GitHub or using Composer.

The following sections describe the flow for uninstalling themes in each case.

Prerequisites

Set your application to the developer or default mode.
Make sure that the theme is not applied on the storefront. To do this, in the Admin panel navigate to Content > Design > Configuration and make sure that your custom theme is not applied for any store view.
Make sure that the theme is not defined as a parent for any registered theme. To do this, in the Admin panel, navigate to Content > Design > Themes. Make sure that your theme is not mentioned in the Parent Theme column. If it is mentioned, you need to uninstall the child theme first.

Uninstall a manually added theme

In case if your theme was created or installed manually, the uninstall procedure is the same, regardless of the way that the application was installed.

To uninstall a manually added theme:

Navigate to the vendor directory where the theme was installed. This directory should be: <installation dir>/app/design/frontend/<VendorName>.
Remove the theme directory.
Remove the theme record from database. If you are using MySQL, run the following command to do this:

mysql -u <user> -p -e "delete from <dbname>.theme where theme_path ='<Vendor>/<theme>' AND area ='frontend' limit 1"

Where:

<user>: your database username
<dbname>: your database name
<Vendor>/<theme>: relative path to the theme directory

Uninstall a theme package

The flow for uninstalling a theme that is Composer package is different, depending on the way your instance was installed.

Composer-based installations

If both the theme and the instance were installed using Composer, you can use a special CLI command. Follow the instructions from the Uninstall themes Composer package topic.

Git-based installations

To uninstall a theme Composer package if your instance was installed by cloning the Git repository, you can also uninstall it using a CLI command. However, you must first remove it from the list of dependencies.

Take the following steps:

Open the <installation dir>/composer.json file.
Find a line with a reference to theme package and delete it. The reference would look like following:
```
"require": {
 ...
    "<vendor>/<theme-name>": "<version>"
},
```
To update the project dependencies, run:
```
composer update
```
Use the magento theme:uninstall CLI command as described in the Uninstall themes Composer package topic.

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You can use the Composer remove command to remove the dependency, but in that case, you must delete the theme record from the database manually.

Uninstall a theme extension

If the theme was installed as an extension, you can uninstall it the same way that theme Composer packages are uninstalled, see the Uninstall a theme package section for details.