I don’t like the bloatware on my system. I am always against the unnecessary packages in the system and always on the lookout for such packages. It’s very easy to list installed packages in Ubuntu and then make sure to remove the unnecessary ones.

You don’t want to have useless apps and packages consume much of the disk space for no reason. I never use VSCode or alternatives like VSCodium on my system, but I installed it for the tutorial. When I listed installed apps on Linux, I learned that they were installed and were not necessary.

If you want to clear your system resources by finding unnecessary apps and packages, then you are at the right place. In this blog post, I am sharing my methods to list installed packages on Ubuntu 22.04 and higher versions.

List Installed Packages in Linux

Method #1 – Use APT-GET to List Installed Packages

APT Package Manager is universal in the Ubuntu and based distributions. This is the simplest and most powerful package manager for Linux. You will see how to use this method to list the installed apps.

First, open the Terminal on your system. “Ctrl + Alt + T” is the keyboard combination to open Terminal with ease. Type the following command in the Terminal.

apt list --installed

This command will list all of the installed packages and apps in your system. You can scroll through the list and find out the packages that are not required at all. The name of the package is displayed in Green color, and the package details are displayed in white or black.

Another method to get the package details based on the name is as follows. At the end of this command, you have to add the name of the package. For example, I used the package name “zorin”.

apt list --installed | grep zorin

This command lists all of the installed packages using the word Zorin. Replace the word with the package that you want to find.

Method #2 – Use DPKG to List Installed App Details

Before the APT package manager was popular, the Ubuntu installations had the DPKG package managers, which extracted the files and installed the apps. You can use the DPKG commands to list the packages and manage all sorts of packages.

Type the following command into the Terminal, and you will see all of the package details.

dpkg --list

Unlike the Apt method, you will see the packages in the well formatted manner, and they won’t collapse if the list is too large.

Also, you can use the following command to get the more formatted look of the output.

dpkg --list less

If you want to search for a specific package, then you have to enter the following command. I’ve used the file name “zorin,” and you have to replace that as per your needs.

sudo dpkg -l | grep zorin

This command will show the package with the selected name. If you want to find a specific package only, then you have to be specific with the search query.

Method #3 – Use Snap to List Packages

Snap is the package manager used by default in Ubuntu with the latest versions and LTS releases. It’s not loved by people that much, but it’s still useful. Here is a simple command that will list all of the packages that are installed in your system through the Snap package manager.

snap list

This is a simple command but it only lists the apps and packages that are installed through the Snap and stored in the Snapd directory.

Conclusion

Before removing the random packages from Ubuntu, you must know what’s exactly installed. The Auto-remove command on Ubuntu does remove the unwanted packages, but it only removes the unused packages that the system deems unwanted. Hence, you should list all the installed apps in Ubuntu 23.04 and 24.04 versions to know more about the actually installed packages. I do this every three months to get rid of the apps that are useless for the current situation. Hence, you should also follow the same and have a smooth experience.

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Swaraj Nandedkar

Living my dream of using Linux on the PC. Been a Linux user from last 5 years and love tinkering with features. Taking a challenge of reading two books per month.