How to Remove League of Legends Completely (Windows, Mac, Riot Client)

You want to remove League of Legends? OK here’s the fastest way. Go to Windows Settings, find LoL under Apps, click Uninstall. That nukes the game itself. Problem is, Riot leaves a ton of cached junk behind in C:\Riot Games and inside %localappdata%\Riot Games. You’ll have to go in there and delete it yourself, Windows won’t do it. On Mac it’s the same story: trash the app, but then you also need to dig into ~/Library/Application Support/Riot Games and wipe what’s hiding there.

Now here is the thing nobody tells you. That “Uninstall” button only gets rid of maybe 80% of the files. The rest? Logs, cached patches, Vanguard data, old replay clips, they just sit there on your drive. I rage-uninstalled LoL three times last year alone (don’t judge me, we’ve all been there after a 7-game loss streak), and every single time I found 500+ MB of junk still hanging around after the “official” uninstall finished.

So I put together this guide with literally everything: Windows 10, Windows 11, Mac, registry cleanup, PBE removal, Vanguard, Riot Client, Linux, even how to nuke your Riot account if you’re truly done. Updated April 2026.

Every Way to Remove League of Legends at a Glance

Here’s a quick cheat sheet. Scroll past it if you already know what you want.

Method	Best For	Removes Everything?	Difficulty
Windows Settings	Quick uninstall, Windows 10/11	No (cache and logs stay)	Easy
Control Panel	Older Windows, creature of habit	No (cache and logs stay)	Easy
Riot Client	Keeping the launcher for Valorant/TFT	No (game only)	Easy
Mac Finder	macOS users	No (Library files stay)	Easy
Manual file wipe	Full cleanup, reclaim all disk space	Yes	Medium
Registry cleanup	Fixing broken reinstalls, total purge	Yes (deepest clean)	Advanced
Revo / IObit	Lazy but thorough approach	Yes (usually)	Easy

For most people the Settings method works fine. Two minutes and the game is off your PC. The manual file wipe? Only matters if you’re OCD about disk space or if your last install was corrupted and you need a completely blank slate before reinstalling.

Hold On. Maybe You Don’t Need to Uninstall

I’ll be real with you. A huge chunk of people Googling “remove league of legends” aren’t actually trying to delete the game forever. Something broke. Client won’t open, Vanguard is being weird, black screen after champion select. If that’s your situation, try repairing instead of nuking the whole install.

In the Riot Client, click your profile icon (top right), then Settings, then pick League of Legends on the left side. There’s a Repair button. Click it. I personally fixed three different “game won’t launch” problems just by doing this, without uninstalling anything.

Your Problem	Try This First
Client crashes, black screen on launch	Riot Client Repair (Settings > LoL > Repair)
Vanguard errors (VAN 57, VAN 68)	Reinstall Vanguard only, skip the game
Infinite patching loop	Grab the Hextech Repair Tool from Riot Support
Need disk space back	Full uninstall + manual cleanup (keep reading)
Done with the game, need a break	Full uninstall + Riot Client + Vanguard removal
Selling your PC	Full uninstall + registry cleanup + file purge
FPS drops, lag in-game	Update GPU drivers first. Uninstalling rarely fixes FPS.

Also worth knowing about the Hextech Repair Tool: it’s a free thing from Riot that force-reinstalls corrupted game files without you having to wipe everything. Download it from Riot’s official support page. Used it twice myself when the in-client repair button didn’t do the job. Both times it worked.

But if none of that applies and you genuinely want LoL off your machine, here we go.

How to Remove League of Legends on Windows 10 and 11

This video from FixitNow walks through the uninstall visually if you’d rather watch than read:

Method 1: Through Settings

1. Win + I opens Settings.
2. Find Apps in the left sidebar. Click it. Then on Win 11 you’ll see Installed Apps at the top. Win 10 calls the same page Apps & Features for some reason.
3. There’s a search bar at the top of the app list. Type “League” and it’ll pop up.
4. Win 11 has this annoying three-dot menu you have to click first. Win 10 is simpler, you just click the app name directly.
5. Click Uninstall. It’ll ask “are you sure?” Say yes.
6. Takes a minute or two. When it says Done, close the window.

And that’s it. Kind of. But then check your C: drive after and you’ll probably find a Riot Games folder still chilling there with logs, replay data, and cached patches. I checked mine after my last “successful” uninstall and found 600 MB worth of stuff just sitting there. Classic Riot.

Method 2: Control Panel (old school)

1. Start menu, type Control Panel. Open it.
2. There’s an Uninstall a Program link under Programs. Click that.
3. Scroll until you see League of Legends. Click it.
4. Uninstall button is at the top of the list now. Click it, follow the wizard.

Same exact result as Method 1, though. Different button, same outcome. You still gotta clean up leftovers manually.

Method 3: Through the Riot Client

A lot of people miss this one, but The Riot Client added its own uninstall option a while back.

1. Open the Riot Client.
2. Click your profile icon (top right corner).
3. Go to Settings.
4. Pick League of Legends from the left sidebar.
5. Click Uninstall. Confirm.

So this removes LoL but keeps the Riot Client alive. Makes sense if you still play Valorant or TFT. If you want everything gone, keep reading.

Remove League of Legends on Mac

1. Quit LoL. If it refuses to close (classic), hit Command + Option + Esc and force kill the process.
2. Open Finder. Go to Applications on the left.
3. Scroll until you see League of Legends. Grab it and drag the whole thing to Trash on your Dock. Or right-click it and pick Move to Trash, same deal.
4. Right-click the Trash icon → Empty Trash. Confirm.

That gets the app off your Mac. But there’s a bunch of cached junk hiding in your Library folders that this doesn’t touch. I’ll show you where in the Mac cleanup section further down.

Wipe Leftover Files on Windows

Now, this is the part most guides skip and it’s also the part where you actually get your disk space back. After the standard uninstall, these folders often stick around:

Location	What’s In There	Approx. Size
C:\Riot Games\League of Legends	Game files, replays, logs	Up to 22 GB
%localappdata%\Riot Games	Client cache, user settings	~500 MB
%programdata%\Riot Games	Vanguard data, global configs	~200 MB
%appdata%\Riot Games	User prefs, auth tokens	~50 MB

Getting rid of all this junk is pretty quick once you know where it lives:

1. Open File Explorer. (Win + E if you’re a keyboard person.) Find C:\Riot Games. See the League of Legends folder? Delete the whole thing.
2. Now this part is important. Press Win + R and type %localappdata%. A folder opens. There’s a Riot Games folder in there too. Delete it. This is where most of the hidden cached data lives.
3. Do the same trick with %programdata% and then %appdata%. If either of them has a Riot Games folder inside, delete those too.
4. Right-click your Recycle Bin, empty it.
5. Restart your PC.

After the reboot, LoL is actually gone. Not “Windows says it’s gone but 700 MB of log files are still sitting on your C: drive” gone. Actually gone.

Registry Cleanup on Windows (for the thorough types)

I know the word “registry” makes people nervous. Relax. You’re looking for 5 or 6 entries with “Riot” in the name and deleting them. That’s it. Nothing scary about it.

This only matters if your previous LoL install was bugged. Like corrupted patches, or that thing where the client loops on the login screen forever, or Vanguard throwing error codes on every boot. If you had any of that and you’re about to reinstall, old registry entries from the broken install can carry those problems over to the new one.

1. Press Win + R, type regedit, hit Enter.
2. Ctrl + F. Type Riot Games in the search box.
3. It’ll highlight something. Read what it says. Does it mention “Riot Games” or “League of Legends” or “Vanguard” in the name? Delete that key. Does it look like something else entirely? Don’t touch it, skip to the next result.
4. F3 jumps to the next match. Keep pressing F3 and deleting Riot-related keys until the search says there’s nothing left.
5. Close regedit. Reboot.

Not comfortable with any of that? Grab CCleaner (the free version is fine). It scans your registry and cleans orphaned entries for you. Riot literally suggests CCleaner on their own support page, so it’s not some random bloatware. I went the manual route twice after particularly messed up installs, cleaned maybe 8 entries total, and the reinstalls worked perfectly both times.

Wipe Leftover Files on Mac

The annoying thing about Mac is that trashing the app doesn’t actually get rid of everything. There are support files, caches, preference plists, log files, all hidden inside your Library folder where you’d never think to look.

1. Open Finder.
2. Press Command + Shift + G. A little “Go to Folder” dialog pops up.
3. Copy-paste these paths one at a time. After each one, look for anything with “Riot” or “League” in the name and throw it in the Trash:
   • ~/Library/Application Support/Riot Games
   • ~/Library/Caches/
   • ~/Library/Preferences/ (you’re looking for files starting with com.riotgames)
   • ~/Library/Logs/
4. Empty Trash when you’ve checked all four.

Oh and one more: /Users/Shared/Riot Games. The Riot Client sometimes puts shared data in there. Easy to miss.

CleanMyMac X can do all of this automatically with its Uninstaller mode if you don’t feel like playing folder detective. It costs money but I’ve seen enough people on r/leagueoflegends vouch for it on Mac that I’ll mention it here.

Get Rid of the Riot Client and Vanguard Too

Here’s a fun one that catches people off guard: after you delete LoL, the Riot Client and Vanguard are still on your PC. Two separate programs. Running silently. You have to kill each one individually.

Riot Client

Go to Settings > Apps > Installed Apps. Look for Riot Client. Uninstall it.

One catch. Deleting the Riot Client means you also lose Valorant, TFT, Legends of Runeterra, everything else from Riot. All of it launches through that client. So don’t touch it if you still play any of those.

Riot Vanguard

Vanguard is… controversial. Kernel-level anti-cheat, starts the second your PC boots, runs constantly in the background even when you’re not playing anything. Reddit has opinions about it, to put it mildly.

1. Find the Vanguard icon in the system tray (shield icon near your clock). Right-click it, Exit Vanguard.
2. Settings > Apps, find Riot Vanguard, uninstall.
3. Restart.

Then after rebooting, go check C:\Program Files\Riot Vanguard. Sometimes a folder stays behind even after uninstall. If it’s there, delete it manually.

How to Remove the League of Legends PBE

Fun fact that trips people up: PBE and the live game are completely independent installs. Different folders, different entries in your app list. Deleting one does absolutely nothing to the other.

If you want PBE gone too, go to Settings > Apps and look for League of Legends (PBE). Sometimes it just shows up as a second “League of Legends” entry which is confusing. Uninstall it, then go manually delete whichever of these folders exists on your drive:

• C:\Riot Games\PBE
• C:\Riot Games\League of Legends PBE

Want to set up PBE again later? We’ve got a walkthrough on how to download the LoL PBE client.

LoL Won’t Uninstall? Here’s Why

Windows threw an error when you tried to uninstall? This happens way too often with Riot’s stuff. Here’s what usually causes it and what to do about each one:

Riot Client blocking it. This is the #1 reason. The client runs in the background even after you close the game window. Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to pull up Task Manager. Scroll through the list. See RiotClientServices.exe? Kill it. See RiotClientUx.exe? Kill that too. Now go try the uninstall again.

The uninstaller file is broken or gone. Sometimes the “Uninstall” entry in Windows points to a file that got corrupted or deleted during a bad patch. You can work around this. Open File Explorer, go to C:\Riot Games\League of Legends, and look for a file named uninstall.exe (or sometimes it’s called unins000.exe). Run that file directly.

Windows says access denied. Right-click whatever you’re trying to run and pick “Run as administrator.” That fixes permission issues 9 times out of 10.

You’ve tried everything and nothing worked. OK. Restart your PC in Safe Mode. (On Win 11: hold Shift and click Restart, then go through Troubleshoot > Advanced > Startup Settings. Or just Google “safe mode windows 11.”) In Safe Mode, try uninstalling from Control Panel. If THAT doesn’t work either, go download the Hextech Repair Tool from that Riot support link I mentioned earlier. It can brute-force remove a busted LoL installation.

Third-Party Uninstallers: Worth It?

Revo Uninstaller and IObit both do a post-uninstall scan where they dig through your registry and file system for leftovers. Useful tool if you don’t want to hunt through folders yourself. For LoL specifically though, once you know those four folder paths I showed you earlier, doing it manually is faster than installing a whole separate program. Where Revo earns its keep is if you’re someone who swaps games constantly and needs this kind of cleanup every week.

Time Check: How Long Does All This Take?

The actual uninstall part? Two minutes. Three on a slow HDD. Not a big deal.

Going full cleanup mode (deleting folders, cleaning registry, removing Vanguard and the Riot Client separately)? Tack on maybe 10 more minutes including the reboot at the end. I timed my last complete removal and it was 12 minutes flat.

Keep in mind that reinstalling League takes 45+ minutes because of the download. That’s worth remembering at 2 AM when you’re hovering over the Uninstall button after going 0/8 on Yasuo in your promos.

Coming Back? How to Reinstall

Gave it a week and caved? Totally normal. Here’s how you come back:

1. Go to the LoL download page or type leagueoflegends.com in your browser.
2. Download the Riot Client installer and run it.
3. Log in. Pick League of Legends from the game list. Hit Install.
4. Wait. The download is about 22 GB as of spring 2026. Go eat something, walk your dog, do literally anything else for 30-45 minutes.

Everything on your account is stored on Riot’s servers. Champs, skins, settings, rank, match history, none of that gets deleted when you remove the game from your PC. The second you log back in, it’s all there waiting for you.

If you want a fresh start on a different region or just skip the Level 30 grind, you could grab a smurf account and go straight into ranked.

Why Do People Remove League of Legends?

I’ve played LoL since Season 5. Uninstalled it… I think four times? Three of those were rage-uninstalls after promos. The fourth was legitimate disk space. Point is, I know why people do it. And I’ve been reading r/leagueoflegends long enough to know the patterns:

Tilt and burnout. You queue up, get an autofilled jungler, bot lane goes 0/6 at 10 minutes, the enemy Draven is running at you with two axes and a dream. You lose 5 in a row at the same rank. At some point the thought crosses your mind: what if this game just… wasn’t on my computer anymore?

Disk space is a legit reason. The game takes 22 GB. Riot Client adds to that. Vanguard adds to that. Cached patches pile up. Before you know it, League is eating 25 GB of your drive. On a 256 GB laptop SSD? That’s a full 10% of your total storage gone on one game. I put exact file sizes in the LoL download size article if you want to check.

Stuff keeps breaking. Vanguard conflicts with other software, the client crashes every patch, VAN 57 errors out of nowhere, ethernet drops mid-game. A clean remove and reinstall fixes most of it.

Moved on. Valorant, Marvel Rivals, WoW Midnight, there are a lot of games competing for your time right now. But nothing wrong with switching things up.

Remove League of Legends on Linux or Steam Deck

No official Linux support from Riot (never has been), but people make it work through Lutris and Wine anyway. Removing the game on Linux is completely different from Windows or Mac.

Lutris: Open Lutris, right-click LoL in your library, Remove. That’s the easy part. You then need to go find and delete the Wine prefix folder. It’s usually sitting in ~/Games/league-of-legends unless you moved it during setup. While you’re at it, peek inside ~/.local/share/lutris because Lutris tends to leave config files behind in there.

Steam Deck: Go into Desktop Mode first. Then find LoL and remove it from your app list. After that you’re on your own, manually deleting the game directory from wherever you put it. Check ~/.wine or your Proton prefix folder for leftover Riot data.

Bright side for Linux users: Vanguard doesn’t run on Linux natively, so that’s one whole section of this guide you get to skip.

Will Removing LoL Break Valorant or TFT?

Nope. Because uninstalling League by itself doesn’t touch your other Riot games. They each have their own files.

But removing the Riot Client kills the launcher for everything. And removing Vanguard means Valorant won’t start. So be careful with those two. Only remove them if you’re done with every Riot game.

Want to Delete Your Riot Account Entirely?

Completely separate thing from removing the game. Deleting your Riot account wipes your champions, skins, RP, match history, everything. Permanently. No going back. And Riot makes you jump through hoops to do it.

1. Go to account.riotgames.com and log in.
2. Find account management.
3. You can’t just click “delete.” You have to submit a request through Riot Support and wait.

The waiting period exists so people don’t nuke accounts in a fit of rage after a bad game. Which, fair enough. If you’re just tilted and need space, don’t do this. Uninstall the game, walk away, leave the account. It’ll be there when you come back in two weeks.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does uninstalling League of Legends delete my account?

Nope. Your account is on Riot’s servers, not your PC. Uninstalling just deletes the game files from your hard drive. All your champs, skins, rank, match history, totally safe. Reinstall, log in, everything’s where you left it.

How do I remove League of Legends on Windows 11?

Settings → Apps → Installed Apps. Find League of Legends, hit the three dots, click Uninstall. After that go manually delete C:\Riot Games and the Riot Games folder inside %localappdata% to clean up the leftover junk.

Why can’t I uninstall League of Legends?

99% of the time it’s the Riot Client running in the background and blocking it. Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open Task Manager. Kill anything that says RiotClientServices.exe or RiotClientUx.exe. Try the uninstall again. If it’s still stuck, reboot and go again.

Do I need to uninstall Riot Vanguard separately?

Yep. Vanguard doesn’t leave when LoL does. It’s a separate program. Go to Apps and Features, find Riot Vanguard, uninstall it from there. But hold on, if you play Valorant, don’t touch Vanguard. Val won’t launch without it.

How much disk space does League of Legends use?

The game alone is around 22 GB right now in 2026. With logs, cached patches, and old replay files piling up, it can hit 25 GB over time. That’s not counting Vanguard and the Riot Client taking up their own space.

Can I reinstall League of Legends after removing it?

Yeah, any time. Go to leagueoflegends.com, download the Riot Client, log in, click Install. Your account data (champs, skins, settings, rank) is all stored on Riot’s end so it comes right back.

Does removing League of Legends also remove the PBE?

No, PBE is its own thing. Separate folder, separate install entry. Go to Apps and Features, find PBE, uninstall that too. Then delete C:\Riot Games\PBE if the folder is still hanging around.

Want to try new champs before they hit live? Check out how to download the LoL PBE. Ethernet dropping you mid-game? The LoL ethernet fix guide has the common causes and solutions.

Last updated: April 2026