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Delete

Beginner
Tutorial

Overview​

If you want to permanently delete a specific canister or all canisters for a specific project on a given deployment (either local or remote), you can do so by running the command:

dfx canister delete <canister-name> // Delete local canister
dfx canister delete <canister-name> --network ic // Delete canister on mainnet

Deleting a canister removes the canister identifier, code, and state. Before you can delete a canister, however, you must first stop the canister to clear any pending message requests or replies.

Delete all canisters​

To delete all canisters for a project:

  • Step 1: Open a new terminal and navigate to your project directory.​

  • Step 2: Start the local canister execution environment, if necessary.​

In most cases, this step is only necessary if you are running the canisters locally.

If you were deleting canisters to run on a remote execution environment, e.g. ICP blockchain, you would include the --network command-line option to perform tasks on the environment specified under this parameter.

  • Step 3: Check the status of the project canisters running on the local canister execution environment by running the following command:​

dfx canister status --all

  • Step 4: Stop all of the project canisters by running the following command:​

dfx canister stop --all

  • Step 5: Delete all of the project canisters by running the following command:​

dfx canister delete --all

Common errors related to canister deletion include: