# snap

# Cleanup old snap packages

After one of my Ubuntu VMs kept filling up its hard drive, I did some investigation and learned my /var/snap folder was bloated at like 100 gig. This was because, as ChatGPT puts it:

Snap packages are designed to keep multiple revisions around.
By default, snapd retains 3 revisions of every package — even if only one is actively used.
On systems where big apps (Chromium, Firefox, Thunderbird, Docker) are snap-installed, this can balloon into tens of GBs pretty quickly.
Your /var/snap eating 100 GB is a common, known issue, not a “red flag” that something is broken.

# One-time clean (dry run)

sevminsec@nessubu:~$ snap list --all \
| awk 'NR>1 && ($NF=="disabled" || $NF ~ /,disabled/) {printf "Would remove: %-20s rev %s\n", $1, $3}'
Would remove: chromium             rev 3248
Would remove: core22               rev 2111
Would remove: core24               rev 1055
Would remove: firefox              rev 6700
Would remove: gnome-42-2204        rev 202
Would remove: snapd                rev 24792
Would remove: thunderbird          rev 791

# One-time clean (for realsies)

snap list --all \
| awk 'NR>1 && ($NF=="disabled" || $NF ~ /,disabled/) {print $1, $3}' \
| while read name rev; do
    sudo snap remove "$name" --revision="$rev"
done

# Long term bloat prevention

Set snap to only keep 2 revisions of packages instead of 3:

sudo snap set system refresh.retain=2