If you want to permanently delete a specific canister smart contract or all canisters for a specific project on the Internet Computer blockchain mainnet, you can do so by running the dfx canister delete command.
Deleting a canister removes the canister identifier, code, and state from the Internet Computer network. Before you can delete a canister, you must first stop the canister to clear any pending message requests or replies.
To delete all canisters for a project running on the local Internet Computer network:
-
Open a new terminal and navigate to your project directory.
-
Start the Internet Computer network, if necessary.
In most cases, this step is only necessary if you are running the Internet Computer network locally.
If you were deleting canisters on a remote network, you would include the
--networkcommand-line option to perform tasks on that network. -
Check the status of the project canisters running on the local Internet Computer network by running the following command:
dfx canister status --all -
Stop all of the project canisters by running the following command:
dfx canister stop --all -
Then delete all of the project canisters by running the following command:
dfx canister delete --all
For more information on canisters can be found here or on the Developer Docs.