Snapd unrecognized service: Solution

You may receive the Snapd unrecognized service error when trying to start the Snap package manager service, or when trying to execute a snap command. In this tutorial, we will go through some troubleshooting steps to resolve the Snapd unrecognized service on a Linux system. Try out some of the methods below to get your Snap service up and running smoothly again.

In this tutorial you will learn:

• How to check if Snapd is running
• How to start the Snapd service on Linux
• How to verify Snapd is installed
• How to install Snapd on major Linux distros
• Snapd unrecognized service solution

Software Requirements and Linux Command Line Conventions

Category	Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used
System	Any Linux distro
Software	Snap package manager
Other	Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command.
Conventions	# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command $ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user

Snapd unrecognized service: Solution

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We will go through several steps below to troubleshoot the Snapd unrecognized service error. Since there are potentially multiple causes for this error occurring, one solution may work for you while another will not.

Is Snapd Installed?

The most basic troubleshooting step is to first make sure that Snapd is actually installed on your system. By default, Ubuntu Linux and some of its derivatives are the only Linux distros that come with Snapd installed by default.

Execute the appropriate command below to see if Snapd is currently installed on your system. If you receive output from executing the corresponding command below, then Snapd is already installed and you can skip to the next troubleshooting step.

Check if Snapd is installed on Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, etc:

$ dpkg -l | grep snapd

Check if Snapd is installed on Red Hat, CentOS, Fedora, Alma, Rocky:

$ rpm -qa | grep snapd

Check if Snapd is installed on Arch Linux, Manjaro, etc:

$ pacman -Q | grep snapd

Installing or Reinstalling Snapd

If you ran one of the previous commands and found that Snapd is not currently installed on your system, then you can use the appropriate command below to install it with your system’s package manager.

Or, if you believe that your installation may have become corrupt, you can reinstall the Snapd package. The commands below will show you how.

Use the following commands to install Snap on Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Kali, and other derivatives.

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$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install snapd

Or to reinstall Snapd:

$ sudo apt install --reinstall snapd

Use the following command to install Snap on Fedora.

$ sudo dnf install snapd

Or to reinstall Snapd:

$ sudo dnf install --reinstall snapd

Use the following commands to install Snap on Arch Linux, using the AUR.

$ git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/snapd.git
$ cd snapd
$ makepkg -si
$ sudo systemctl enable --now snapd.socket

Use the following commands to install Snap on Manjaro.

$ sudo pacman -S snapd
$ sudo systemctl enable --now snapd.socket

Or to reinstall Snapd on Arch or Manjaro:

$ sudo pacman -Sy snapd

Check if Snapd is running, and restart it

In order to use the Snap package manager, the service must be started on your computer.

To start Snapd:

$ sudo systemctl start snapd

To make Snapd start automatically at every system boot:

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$ sudo systemctl enable snapd

If you encounter problems with Snap, a good troubleshooting step is to restart the service:

$ sudo systemctl restart snapd

To check if Snapd is running, and to see any related error messages, check its status:

$ systemctl status snapd

The output you receive from the above command will give you more hints about what the problem could be with your Snap service.

Closing Thoughts

In this tutorial, we saw how to troubleshoot the Snapd unrecognized service error on a Linux system. This error normally indicates that the Snapd service is not currently running, which either means that Snapd is not installed to begin with, or that the service just needs to be manually started with a systemctl command. For more complex errors, we can always reinstall the Snapd service as shown above, or check the current status to get to the root cause.