Do older releases of MATLAB need to be uninstalled to install a newer release of MATLAB?
Show older comments
Do older releases of MATLAB need to be uninstalled to install a newer release of MATLAB?
Accepted Answer
MathWorks Support Team
on 19 Dec 2018
Edited: MathWorks Support Team
on 19 Dec 2018
4 votes
It is not necessary to uninstall older releases of MATLAB to install a new release of MATLAB. The default MATLAB installation path includes the name of the release, so each release of MATLAB installs into a unique folder to prevent different releases of MATLAB from interfering with each other. You can have as many releases of MATLAB on a single machine as necessary.
Furthermore, multiple releases of MATLAB installed on the same machine (and in the same user account, for user-based licenses) do not count as separate activations of MATLAB. No matter how many instances of MATLAB are installed on a machine in the same user account, from a licensing perspective this still counts as a single seat of MATLAB.
If you would still like to uninstall older releases of MATLAB for the purposes of recovering drive space, refer to the MATLAB documentation:
1 Comment
Steven Lord
on 12 Jan 2023
So if I continue to install every new version, my computer will have dozens of Matlab versions???
If you don't uninstall the older versions, yes.
Why not include an unistall old version option in the update process???
I believe a lot of users want to double-check that their existing code works in the newer version before uninstalling the older version. That way if there is a change or a bug that prevents them from adopting the newer version they can continue using the older version until they've reacted to the change or the bug has been fixed.
From a more software development perspective, the Single Responsibility of the Installer is to install the software. Uninstalling the software is the Single Responsibility of the Uninstaller. You wouldn't expect the Uninstaller to ask "Do you also want to install the newest release of the software?" would you?
More Answers (0)
Categories
Find more on Introduction to Installation and Licensing in Help Center and File Exchange
Products
on 16 Oct 2009
on 12 Jan 2023
Community Treasure Hunt
Find the treasures in MATLAB Central and discover how the community can help you!
Start Hunting!
