How to remove a material from an object in the editor?

Hello,
I've been Googl'ing and searching for what should be a simple thing, but hoping I can get an answer here.

I dragged two different materials onto an object face, and I see them both listed in the inspector pane listed with the components of that object. However, I want to remove one of those materials. The cog for the material item doesn't have a remove option, and the options there seem to affect the material itself. I can't seem to select the material in the list, nor find any option to remove it. Tried dragging it out of the list, too.

Is there something easy I am missing to remove a material from an object? It is odd that I have found others ask this with no answers, and searching for 'Remove material' doesn't turn up anything...

Any help is really appreciated!

 

In the inspector, on the MeshRenderer component, right click on the material you want to remove in the Materials list and click "Delete Array Element".

Doing this once will clear the material, but leave an empty array element "None (Material)". Right click on that element and again click "Delete Array Element" to remove that empty element.

 

Thank you so much!

 

replying 2 years later: Why don't the unity developers make it so that you can just remove the material from the material component properties instead of having to go into the mesh renderer??