How do I remove local (untracked) files from the current Git working tree?

Asked 2023-09-20 19:53:58 View 951,187

How do I delete untracked local files from the current working tree?

  • This interactive git cheat sheet ndpsoftware.com/git-cheatsheet.html shows the git workspace (google gives you better results with "workspace" than "working copy"). - anyone
  • Note: if you only want to remove some untracked files, but not all of them, git clean has now an interactive mode! See my answer to this other question: git 1.8.4+ - anyone
  • Before you post a new answer, consider there are already 25+ answers for this question. Make sure that your answer contributes what is not among existing answers - anyone
  • To clarify for the understanding of the uninitiated and those new to Git - run git status and if it shows a file as untracked, and you don't want that file in the repo, you can just go to your filesystem and delete or move it. This will not do anything bad to your local repo or to Git. You can also use git clean or some variation in the answers below, including the interactive version to delete just selective files, but interactive mode can be tedious. Whatever you do, make sure you understand what git clean will delete or use --dry-run to have it tell you without deleting anything. - anyone
  • If the files are not yet being tracked, couldn't you just remove them without git? rm files-to-be-deleted - anyone

Answers

git-clean - Remove untracked files from the working tree

Synopsis

git clean [-d] [-f] [-i] [-n] [-q] [-e <pattern>] [-x | -X] [--] <path>…​

Description

Cleans the working tree by recursively removing files that are not under version control, starting from the current directory.

Normally, only files unknown to Git are removed, but if the -x option is specified, ignored files are also removed. This can, for example, be useful to remove all build products.

If any optional <path>... arguments are given, only those paths are affected.


Step 1 is to show what will be deleted by using the -n option:

# Print out the list of files and directories which will be removed (dry run)
git clean -n -d

Clean Step - beware: this will delete files:

# Delete the files from the repository
git clean -f
  • To remove directories, run git clean -f -d or git clean -fd
  • To remove ignored files, run git clean -f -X or git clean -fX
  • To remove ignored and non-ignored files, run git clean -f -x or git clean -fx

Note the case difference on the X for the two latter commands.

If clean.requireForce is set to "true" (the default) in your configuration, one needs to specify -f otherwise nothing will actually happen.

Again see the git-clean docs for more information.


Options

-f, --force

If the Git configuration variable clean.requireForce is not set to false, git clean will refuse to run unless given -f, -n or -i.

-x

Don’t use the standard ignore rules read from .gitignore (per directory) and $GIT_DIR/info/exclude, but do still use the ignore rules given with -e options. This allows removing all untracked files, including build products. This can be used (possibly in conjunction with git reset) to create a pristine working directory to test a clean build.

-X

Remove only files ignored by Git. This may be useful to rebuild everything from scratch, but keep manually created files.

-n, --dry-run

Don’t actually remove anything, just show what would be done.

-d

Remove untracked directories in addition to untracked files. If an untracked directory is managed by a different Git repository, it is not removed by default. Use -f option twice if you really want to remove such a directory.

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

  • git clean -f works only in the directory where it's called (and subdirectories). If you want to clean the whole working copy, you should call it in its root directory. - anyone
  • It is also removing all files inside .gitignore. I need to delete only files/folders which are new and not in .gitignore - anyone
  • @Kostanos If you don't want to remove files that are in .gitignore, then do not provide the -x flag. - anyone
  • git clean -f :/ works as if you had run it in the root repo dir. See also later answers also accounting for submodules with git clean -ffxd :/ - anyone
  • After struggling and cursing for 45 solid minutes, I found @EduardoBezerra's comment... I think the OP should edit his answer to emphasize git clean's behavior - of only deleting stuff in the directory you are - and subdirectories thereof. It's not clear from git help or from the answer itself. - anyone

Use git clean -f -d to make sure that directories are also removed.

  1. Don’t actually remove anything, just show what would be done.

    git clean -n
    

    or

    git clean --dry-run
    
  2. Remove untracked directories in addition to untracked files. If an untracked directory is managed by a different Git repository, it is not removed by default. Use the -f option twice if you really want to remove such a directory.

    git clean -fd
    

You can then check if your files are really gone with git status.

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

  • As previously stated, good to dry-run it with git clean -n -d - anyone
  • Same thing is to do git clean -nd and git clean -fd. - anyone
  • Using -n or --dry-run by themselves did nothing. As per @Ms01 and @Micer, you need to add -d, as in git clean -nd to show what it is going to remove. - anyone

I am surprised nobody mentioned this before:

git clean -i

That stands for interactive and you will get a quick overview of what is going to be deleted offering you the possibility to include/exclude the affected files. Overall, still faster than running the mandatory --dry-run before the real cleaning.

You will have to toss in a -d if you also want to take care of empty folders. At the end, it makes for a nice alias:

git iclean

That being said, the extra hand holding of interactive commands can be tiring for experienced users. These days I just use the already mentioned git clean -fd

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

  • git clean -f 'untracked file path' - anyone

Simple Way to remove untracked files

To remove all untracked files, The simple way is to add all of them first and reset the repo as below

git add --all
git reset --hard HEAD

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

  • You can replace git add --all by git add .. So you can do it in a shorter way in oneline git add . && git reset --hard HEAD ( be very carefull with this command). - anyone
  • Because git clean apparently also deletes everything that is ignored. It just deleted my node_modules folder. Doing this would first stage all files except for the ignored ones, and then delete them by doing a reset. Ignored files will not be touched. - anyone
  • @Andreas it doesn't delete ignored files for me (git 2.14.1). You should run git clean -n anyway before doing the real deletion (or use git clean -i). - anyone
  • git clean deletes ignored files only if you use either the -x or -X option, otherwise it just deletes untracked files. - anyone
  • @RousseauAlexandre git add . only adds from the current directory on down, whereas git add --all applies to the repo. The latter appears like a safer option. - anyone

If untracked directory is a git repository of its own (e.g. submodule), you need to use -f twice:

git clean -d -f -f

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

  • BTW, this is written in documentation : Git will refuse to delete directories with .git sub directory or file unless a second -f is given. But thanks anyway! - anyone
  • @MaximSuslov There would be significantly fewer questions asked on SO if documentation were as helpful as your comment suggests. But thanks anyway! - anyone
  • You may want to cd to the root folder before running it, e.g. cd to git rev-parse --show-toplevel - anyone

This is what I always use:

git clean -fdx

For a very large project you might want to run it a couple of times.

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

  • @Martin One of the projects I'm working on is +8 years old with +80 developers actively coding. Git sometimes fails to clean it on the first pass. - anyone
  • I can confirm this, so this is still valid in 2020. We are also working on a large project and I had to run it 4-5 times until GIT did not find any more files to be deleted. - anyone
  • Main thing to keep in mind is that above command works only on the directory you are in. So if you run above command in subfolder then it doesnt remove untracked files from parent folder or it's other subfolders. - anyone

I like git stash push -u because you can undo them all with git stash pop.

EDIT: Also I found a way to show untracked file in a stash (e.g. git show stash@{0}^3) https://stackoverflow.com/a/12681856/338986

EDIT2: git stash save is deprecated in favor of push. Thanks @script-wolf.

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

  • Can you explain the -u on the stash? I do not follow how that works differently from git stash save. I tried this and it worked. Looked on git docs and could not find it there either. - anyone
  • -u is equivalent to --include-untracked. You can find a help with git help stash. - anyone
  • @hiroshi Thanks! after trying every darn solution from a dozen different people this is the one that finally worked...whew ! Even a git stash did nada. The save - u took care of untracked. reset hard /clean force/etc none of these did anything for me. - anyone
  • The save option was deprecated in favor of push, which does the same but more. You can read more here, https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44680028/whats-the-difference-between-git-stash-save-and-git-stash-push/44681952 - anyone

Be careful while running `git clean` command.

Always use -n first

Always use -n before running the clean command as it will show you what files would get removed.

-d Normally, when no is specified, git clean will not recurse into untracked directories to avoid removing too much. Specify -d to have it recurse into such directories as well. If any paths are specified, -d is irrelevant; all untracked files matching the specified paths (with exceptions for nested git directories mentioned under --force) will be removed.

-f | --force If the Git configuration variable clean.requireForce is not set to false, git clean will refuse to delete files or directories unless given -f or -i. Git will refuse to modify untracked nested git repositories (directories with a .git subdirectory) unless a second -f is given.

git clean -n -d 
git clean -n -d -f

Now run without -n if output was what you intend to remove.

git clean -d -f

By default, git clean will only remove untracked files that are not ignored. Any file that matches a pattern in your .gitignore or other ignore files will not be removed. If you want to remove those files too, you can add a -x to the clean command.

git clean -f -d -x

There is also interactive mode available -i with the clean command

git clean -x -i

Alternatively

If you are not 100% sure that deleting your uncommitted work is safe, you could use stashing instead
git stash --all

Before you use stash --all note: If the --all option is used, then the ignored files are stashed and cleaned in addition to the untracked files.

git stash push --keep-index

If the --keep-index option is used, all changes already added to the index are left intact. Your staged changes remain in your workspace, but at the same time, they are also saved into your stash.

Calling git stash without any arguments is equivalent to git stash push.

git stash push -m "name your stash" // before git stash save (deprecated)

Stashing based on the used flags can clear your directory from unstaged / staged files by writing them to stash storage. I give’s flexibility to retrieve the files at any point in time using stash with apply or pop. Then if you are fine with removing your stashed files you could run:

git stash drop // or clean

To see full instruction on how to work with stash see this How to name and retrieve a stash by name in git?

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Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

  • the stash is a good idea, however you might wanna use git stash save and type some comment as to what this stash was for - anyone
  • I had about 20 images I wanted removed from various directories but git stash --all removed thousands of files and broke my project. What's up with that? It even removed vendor directory. I would be cautious using this. Luckily I am doing this in a local repo at home and not in production. - anyone
  • git stash --all Will remove vendor directory, node_modules, .env and storage files in Laravel plus what ever else I missed. I had to composer install, recreate my .env file and recreate cache folders in storage. Terrible idea unless you want to remove untracked files plus everything that's inside your .gitignore file - anyone
  • newer git versions can use git stash push which is also able to stash untracked files - anyone

git-clean is what you are looking for. It is used to remove untracked files from the working tree.

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

If needed to remove untracked files from particular subdirectory,

git clean -f {dir_path}

And combined way to delete untracked dir/files and ignored files.

git clean -fxd {dir_path}

after this you will have modified files only in git status.

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

Remove all extra folders and files in this repo + submodules

This gets you in same state as fresh clone.

git clean -ffdx

Remove all extra folders and files in this repo but not its submodules

git clean -fdx

Remove extra folders but not files (ex. build or logs folder)

git clean -fd

Remove extra folders + ignored files (but not newly added files)

If file wasn't ignored and not yet checked-in then it stays. Note the capital X.

git clean -fdX

New interactive mode

git clean

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

  • This answer works great! You can always add --dry-run option to list the files/folders to remove before commit the action - anyone

OK, deleting unwanted untracked files and folders are easy using git in command line, just do it like this:

git clean -fd

Double check before doing it as it will delete the files and folders without making any history...

Also in this case, -f stands for force and -d stands for directory...

So, if you want to delete files only, you can use -f only:

git clean -f

If you want to delete(directories) and files, you can delete only untracked directories and files like this:

git clean -fd

Also, you can use -x flag for including the files which are ignored by git. This would be helpful if you want to delete everything.

And adding -i flag, makes git asking you for permission for deleting files one by one on the go.

If you not sure and want to check things first, add -n flag.

Use -q if you don't want to see any report after successful deletion.

I also create the image below to make it more memorable, especially I have seen many people confuse -f for cleaning folder sometimes or mix it up somehow!


deleting unwanted untracked files and folder

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

git clean -fd removes directory

git clean -fX removes ignored files

git clean -fx removes ignored and un-ignored files

can be used all above options in combination as

git clean -fdXx

check git manual for more help

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

  • The command git clean -fdXx produces the error message "fatal: -x and -X cannot be used together" (using git-2.8). For your last sentence within your answer, please provide a link to git manual. Cheers - anyone

A better way is to use: git clean

git clean -d -x -f

This removes untracked files, including directories (-d) and files ignored by git (-x).

Also, replace the -f argument with -n to perform a dry-run or -i for interactive mode and it will tell you what will be removed.

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

User interactive approach:

git clean -i -fd

Remove .classpath [y/N]? N
Remove .gitignore [y/N]? N
Remove .project [y/N]? N
Remove .settings/ [y/N]? N
Remove src/com/arsdumpgenerator/inspector/ [y/N]? y
Remove src/com/arsdumpgenerator/manifest/ [y/N]? y
Remove src/com/arsdumpgenerator/s3/ [y/N]? y
Remove tst/com/arsdumpgenerator/manifest/ [y/N]? y
Remove tst/com/arsdumpgenerator/s3/ [y/N]? y

-i for interactive
-f for force
-d for directory
-x for ignored files(add if required)

Note: Add -n or --dry-run to just check what it will do.

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

To remove Untracked files :

git add .
git reset --hard HEAD

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

A lifehack for such situation I just invented and tried (that works perfectly):

git add .
git reset --hard HEAD

Beware! Be sure to commit any needed changes (even in non-untracked files) before performing this.

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

  • At least this is a different approach. :) Another way, that would remember the deleted files in the reflog but not in any branches, would be: git add . git commit -m 'about to delete' git reset --hard HEAD~ - anyone
  • even more quick way is git add . && git reset --hard HEAD - anyone
  • git add . && git reset --hard - anyone
  • @AlexanderMills git reset --hard resets all uncommited changes BUT UNTRACKED FILES to the state of the latest commit. That is why we first need git add . -- that stages all untracked files (so they are reset, too) - anyone

For me only following worked:

git clean -ffdx

In all other cases, I was getting message "Skipping Directory" for some subdirectories.

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

  • Thanks. I left out the -x and just used git clean -ffd to avoid erasing files in the .gitignore. - anyone

git clean -f -d -x $(git rev-parse --show-cdup) applies clean to the root directory, no matter where you call it within a repository directory tree. I use it all the time as it does not force you to leave the folder where you working now and allows to clean & commit right from the place where you are.

Be sure that flags -f, -d, -x match your needs:

-d
       Remove untracked directories in addition to untracked files. If an
       untracked directory is managed by a different Git repository, it is
       not removed by default. Use -f option twice if you really want to
       remove such a directory.

-f, --force
       If the Git configuration variable clean.requireForce is not set to
       false, git clean will refuse to delete files or directories unless
       given -f, -n or -i. Git will refuse to delete directories with .git
       sub directory or file unless a second -f is given. This affects
       also git submodules where the storage area of the removed submodule
       under .git/modules/ is not removed until -f is given twice.

-x
       Don't use the standard ignore rules read from .gitignore (per
       directory) and $GIT_DIR/info/exclude, but do still use the ignore
       rules given with -e options. This allows removing all untracked
       files, including build products. This can be used (possibly in
       conjunction with git reset) to create a pristine working directory
       to test a clean build.

There are other flags as well available, just check git clean --help.

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

  • BTW you can just do git clean {flags} :/ so it will be as if you ran the command in the repo root - anyone

If you just want to delete the files listed as untracked by 'git status'

git stash save -u
git stash drop "stash@{0}"

I prefer this to 'git clean' because 'git clean' will delete files ignored by git, so your next build will have to rebuild everything and you may lose your IDE settings too.

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

  • This will also remove valid changes to tracked files. I wouldn't recommend it. - anyone
  • Yeah, you'd want to commit changes to tracked files first. - anyone

git add --all, git stash and git stash drop, try these three commands in this order inorder to remove all untracked files. By adding all those untracked files to git and stashing them will move all those untracked files to stash list and dropping out top one i.e., stash@{0} will remove the stashed changes from stash list.

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

To know what will be deleted before actually deleting:

git clean -d -n

It will output something like:

Would remove sample.txt

To delete everything listed in the output of the previous command:

git clean -d -f

It will output something like:

Removing sample.txt

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

To remove the untracked files you should first use command to view the files that will be affected by cleaning

git clean -fdn

This will show you the list of files that will be deleted. Now to actually delete those files use this command:

git clean -fd

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

uggested Command for Removing Untracked Files from git docs is git clean

git clean - Remove untracked files from the working tree

Suggested Method: Interative Mode by using git clean -i so we can have control over it. let see remaining available options.

Available Options:

git clean 
    -d -f -i -n -q -e -x -X (can use either)

Explanation:

1. -d

Remove untracked directories in addition to untracked files. If an untracked directory is managed by a different Git repository, it is not removed by default. Use -f option twice if you really want to remove such a directory.

2. -f, --force

If the Git configuration variable clean.requireForce is not set to false, git clean will refuse to run unless given -f, -n or -i.

3. -i, --interactive

Show what would be done and clean files interactively. See “Interactive mode” for details.

4. -n, --dry-run

Don’t actually remove anything, just show what would be done.

5. -q, --quiet

Be quiet, only report errors, but not the files that are successfully removed.

6. -e , --exclude=

In addition to those found in .gitignore (per directory) and $GIT_DIR/info/exclude, also consider these patterns to be in the set of the ignore rules in effect.

7. -x

Don’t use the standard ignore rules read from .gitignore (per directory) and $GIT_DIR/info/exclude, but do still use the ignore rules given with -e options. This allows removing all untracked files, including build products. This can be used (possibly in conjunction with git reset) to create a pristine working directory to test a clean build.

8. -X

Remove only files ignored by Git. This may be useful to rebuild everything from scratch, but keep manually created files.

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

  • I think you have a typo uggested but that's just a "uggestion lol - anyone

git clean -f to remove untracked files from working directory.

I have covered some basics here in my blog, git-intro-basic-commands

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

Normal git clean command doesn't remove untracked files with my git version 2.9.0.windows.1.

$ git clean -fdx     # doesn't remove untracked files
$ git clean -fdx *   # Append star then it works!

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

We can easily removed local untracked files from the current git working tree by using below git comments.

git reset [--soft | --mixed [-N] | --hard | --merge | --keep] [-q] [<commit>]

Example:

git reset --hard HEAD

Links :

  1. https://git-scm.com/docs/git-reset
  2. How do I use 'git reset --hard HEAD' to revert to a previous commit?
  3. Reset local repository branch to be just like remote repository HEAD
  4. https://jwiegley.github.io/git-from-the-bottom-up/3-Reset/4-doing-a-hard-reset.html

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

  • This will also remove changes staged for commit, not only untracked files, which may not be what you want. - anyone
  • Doesn't work: leaves some files. git clean -ffdx is the solution - anyone

Clean out git repository and all submodules recursively

The following command will clean out the current git repository and all its submodules recursively:

(git clean -d -x -f && git submodule foreach --recursive git clean -d -x -f)

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

  • surely this should be used with great caution - anyone

oh-my-zsh with zsh provides those great aliases via the git plugin. They can be used in bash as well.

gclean='git clean -fd'
gpristine='git reset --hard && git clean -dfx'

  • gclean removes untracked directories in addition to untracked files.
  • gpristine hard reset the local changes, remove untracked directories, untracked files and don't use the standard ignore rules read from .gitignore (per directory) and $GIT_DIR/info/exclude, but do still use the ignore rules given with -e options. This allows removing all untracked files, including build products. This can be used (possibly in conjunction with git reset) to create a pristine working directory to test a clean build.

Answered   2023-09-20 19:53:58

  • Thanks for you feedback, my statement was confusing. I wanted to say that the highlighted aliases come automatically with oh-my-zsh. They obviously work great in bash. I edited my answer to reflect that. - anyone