How to uninstall older versions of JDK on a OSX machine

How to uninstall older versions of JDK on a OSX machine.md

How to cleanly uninstall older versions of JDK on a OSX machine

Say you want to remove the JDK 1.8.0_161:

Check that's installed with ls -1 /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines

for example:

$ ls -1 /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines
jdk1.7.0_80.jdk
jdk1.8.0_161.jdk
jdk1.8.0_172.jdk
jdk1.8.0_181.jdk

Remove the folder with

sudo rm -R /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_161.jdk

Remove the entry in the OSX Installer database:

first, find the entry name with pkgutil --pkgs | grep -i oracle

for example:

$ pkgutil --pkgs | grep -i oracle
com.oracle.jdk8u161
com.oracle.jre
com.oracle.jdk7u80
com.oracle.jdk8u181
com.oracle.jdk8u152

Then, remove the entry of the JVM you want to remove, e.g. com.oracle.jdk8u161, with

sudo pkgutil --forget com.oracle.jdk8u161

For those using jenv to manage different JVM/JDK versions, remember to remove the JDK from there too:

jenv versions to see what is the name of the JDK you want to remove, then

jenv remove oracle64-1.8.0.181`
 JDK oracle64-1.8.0.181 removed

jenv rehash