Free Disk Space by Cleaning Stale Snap Revisions on Ubuntu

On Ubuntu 24.04, /var/lib/snapd/snaps quietly grew to about 3.5 GB.

Most of that was not one orphaned file. It was Snap keeping old package revisions, plus heavy shared runtimes that desktop snaps depend on.

• What Was Taking Space
• Clean Disabled Revisions
• Two GNOME Snaps Are Not Always Duplicates
• Check Before Removing a Platform Snap
• What Remained, and What Is Still Useful
  • mesa-2404
  • firmware-updater
• Optional: Remove Snap Completely
• Result
• Checklist

What Was Taking Space

A directory listing showed pairs of large snaps, for example:

core22_2139.snap / core22_2411.snap
gnome-42-2204_247.snap / gnome-42-2204_263.snap
gnome-46-2404_153.snap / gnome-46-2404_164.snap
mesa-2404_1165.snap / mesa-2404_1839.snap
snapd_27406.snap / snapd_27591.snap

By default, Snap keeps 2 revisions of each package so you can roll back after a bad update. That is useful, but expensive when the packages are 400–600 MB each.

The biggest duplicate cost was roughly:

Clean Disabled Revisions

First, remove every disabled (non-active) revision while keeping the current ones:

sudo snap list --all | awk '/disabled/{print $1, $3}' | while read snapname revision; do
  sudo snap remove "$snapname" --revision="$revision"
done

That alone dropped the directory from about 3.5 GB to about 1.9 GB.

To limit future growth, keep Snap at the minimum retain count:

sudo snap set system refresh.retain=2

Snap does not allow retaining fewer than 2 revisions. Setting 2 means it will not keep a third copy around.

Two GNOME Snaps Are Not Always Duplicates

After cleanup, both of these were still present:

gnome-42-2204_263.snap
gnome-46-2404_164.snap

That is not two revisions of the same package. They are two different GNOME platform runtimes:

• gnome-42-2204: GNOME 42 stack for older snaps (Ubuntu 22.04 base)
• gnome-46-2404: GNOME 46 stack for newer snaps (Ubuntu 24.04 base)

Snap apps declare which runtime they need, so both can coexist.

Do not force-remove a platform snap without checking dependents first.

Check Before Removing a Platform Snap

Use the snap name, not the filename with revision suffix:

# wrong
snap connections mesa-2404_1839

# right
snap connections gnome-42-2204

In this case, gnome-42-2204 looked unused:

Interface  Plug  Slot                         Notes
content    -     gnome-42-2204:gnome-42-2204  -

An empty Plug column means no installed snap is connected to it. That made removal safe:

sudo snap remove gnome-42-2204

After removing unused GNOME platform snaps as well, /var/lib/snapd/snaps dropped further to about 718 MB.

If some older snap later needs gnome-42-2204 again, snapd can re-download it automatically.

What Remained, and What Is Still Useful

After cleanup, the remaining snaps looked like this:

bare
core22
core24
firmware-updater
gtk-common-themes
mesa-2404
snapd
snapd-desktop-integration
snap-store

Firefox and Thunderbird had already been removed earlier, so most of the leftover Snap stack was infrastructure plus a few Ubuntu desktop utilities.

mesa-2404

This is not an app you launch. It is a shared Mesa/OpenGL/Vulkan content snap for Ubuntu 24.04-based desktop snaps.

Checking connections:

snap connections mesa-2404

showed active GPU content plugs from:

• firmware-updater
• snap-store
• snapd-desktop-integration

So mesa-2404 was still required for those GUI snaps. Removing it would risk broken or software-rendered Snap UIs.

The disconnected kernel-gpu-2404 plug is normal on a regular Ubuntu desktop. Those systems talk to the host GPU through /dev/dri rather than a kernel snap.

firmware-updater

This is Ubuntu’s graphical frontend for hardware firmware updates. Under the hood it uses fwupd and LVFS for BIOS/UEFI, SSD, and peripheral firmware.

If you purge Snap entirely, you lose the GUI app, but firmware updates are still available via:

fwupdmgr get-updates
fwupdmgr update

Optional: Remove Snap Completely

You can remove Snap thoroughly if you do not want it at all. On Ubuntu desktop, that also removes Snap-only apps such as snap-store and firmware-updater.

A careful sequence:

# 1. Remove installed snaps first
sudo snap list | awk 'NR>1 {print $1}' | while read snapname; do
  sudo snap remove --purge "$snapname"
done

# 2. Stop services
sudo systemctl stop snapd.service snapd.socket snapd.seeded.service
sudo systemctl disable snapd.service snapd.socket snapd.seeded.service

# 3. Purge the package
sudo apt purge -y snapd

# 4. Delete leftovers
sudo rm -rf /var/cache/snapd/ /var/lib/snapd/ /snap
rm -rf ~/snap

# 5. Prevent automatic reinstall
printf 'Package: snapd\nPin: release *\nPin-Priority: -10\n' | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/nosnapd

Then replace anything you still need with APT or Flatpak. For firmware updates, keep using fwupdmgr.

In this case I did not purge Snap completely. Cleaning disabled revisions and unused platform snaps was enough.

Result

About 2.8 GB came back without removing the useful pieces that remaining Snap apps still depend on.

Checklist

1. Inspect /var/lib/snapd/snaps
2. Remove disabled revisions with snap remove --revision=...
3. Set refresh.retain=2
4. Distinguish old revisions from different major platform snaps
5. Use snap connections <name> before removing shared runtimes
6. Keep mesa-2404 if GUI snaps still plug into it
7. Keep firmware-updater, or fall back to fwupdmgr
8. Only purge snapd if you are ready to replace Snap-only apps