How to uninstall a Visual Studio 2013 extension manually?

Question

I just installed an extension to my Visual Studio 2013 app. I decided I don\'t want that extension so I went to Tools->Extensions and Updates and scrolled down to t

Answer 1

My question is, how do I get the identifier? Is it the same as the extension version?

Extensions are normally packaged in a VSIX file, which are just zip archives. Inside the zip archive is a manifest file that gives the extension identifier.

Here is a view of a SQLite VSIX file, with the manifest file (extension.vsixmanifest) highlighted:

If you open the manifest file, you will see something like:

<PackageManifest Version="2.0.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/vsx-schema/2011">
  <Metadata>
    <Identity Id="SQLite.WinRT" Version="3.8.5" Language="en-US" Publisher="SQLite Development Team" />
    <DisplayName>SQLite for Windows Runtime</DisplayName>
    ...

To answer your question, the identifier is the Id field in the third line above. In this case SQLite.WinRT.

On my machine, I ran the following and was able to uninstall the SQLite extension:

vsixinstaller /q /a /u:SQLite.WinRT

Also, let's say hypothetically that using VSIXInstaller does not work. Is there a way to manually uninstall an extension?

I think this is a rather broad question. I am no expert on VSIX extensions, but it seems each one can have it's own quirks. Simply deleting a directory, as suggested in this answer, may work 90% of the time; however, there may be extensions that cannot be uninstalled this way. The PHP extension falls into the latter case.

I think the question you are trying to ask is this one:

How do I uninstall the PHP Tools for Visual Studio 2013 extension?

The answer appears to be in your screen shot. If you look in the lower right corner of your screen shot, you will see this text:

You need to use the Programs and Features pane in the Windows Control Panel to remove this extension.

Sure enough if I take a look at the Programs and Features, I see this:

Answer 2

Total-Uninstaller (https://github.com/tsasioglu/Total-Uninstaller) will easily remove all that clutter. Just download, execute as administrator and select every thing that has to go.

Answer 3

The solution is pretty simple, you need to uninstall it directly from the "Programs and Features", because it is develop by another company. I hope it still helps.

Answer 4

Well the above answers didn't work for me, when trying to uninstall the Advertising SDK, F# and Windows Phone crap that somehow got installed into my VS. I couldn't use the Uninstall button on the Extensions dialog, and they were missing from Programs And Features.

I managed to get rid of them all using the tool from https://totaluninstaller.codeplex.com - it seems some guy got fed up with VS too and coded up something to remove these extensions. It works by listing out all extensions you have registered, you can filter that list via config, then when you're happy you can go ahead and uninstall that filtered list. Worked nicely for me!